RE:IGNITE Arts, Craft and Culture
As part of our trilogy to support community co-creation in the city, thirty seven of us came together to RE:IGNITE Wolverhampton, building on our earlier RE:IMAGINE session a few weeks earlier. At the previous session, people had identified seven themes that they were interested in putting energy into developing further. We shared examples of how similar ideas have been ignited around the world, and in themed breakout rooms, sparked ideas for how we can make this happen in Wolverhampton. This blog is part of a series sharing what happened in each room.
As a creative and busy woman I often find myself jumping from one project to another, which some may find confusing but for me it keeps me alive and on my toes, I love that it takes away mundanity. During our RE:IMAGINE session I joined the meeting from a car park in Carlisle on my way to my parents and it opened up a whole new world of “hey I can do this from anywhere!” which gives me the freedom to potentially get involved with a lot more creative things and added to the inspiration that this session ignited in my soul.
For my input into the RE:IGNITE sessions I chose to cover both Sharing Culture and Arts, Crafts and Culture both of which resonate strongly with me and my wider commitments of running Gatis Community Space and being involved in Boundary Way Arts Project. I quickly realised that I needed help and co-opted my Gatis colleague Steve Poultney, manager of The Real Junk Food Project Wolverhampton, into covering Sharing Culture.
So began my journey around the world, looking at inspirational projects!
My first inspiration came from a chance meeting through attending an Eden Project Communities zoom session on How to Measure and Improve your Project Impact. I connected with María José Bejarano who works with the Embodying Reconciliation project We have now sparked up an email conversation sharing with each other the work we are doing. Its wonderful to share across the planet with someone so passionate about helping people using culture. Her project works with vulnerable and diverse children and communities in Columbia and around the world focussing on dance and cultural heritage. A link to a video in English about their project can be found here.
Next I felt compelled to look at projects similar to Gatis — something more community hub based that puts art and crafts at the heart of their activities and I came across Inkwell Arts based in Leeds.
Since 2009 they have been providing a range of creative activities. They now have a dedicated space pictured above and offer a variety of activities but the one that excited me most is their use of engaging creativity as a means of improving mental health. This project really captures what creativity can do for a wide variety of people and problems. Imagine if we could all access some form of creative outlet to help improve our daily lives.
Following on from this I started looking at music and arts and came across many festivals combining different art forms and cultures but one that really stood out and one that I have personally experienced myself is Supersonic Festival run by Capsule — here is an organisation doing amazing and experimental things on our doorstep.
I love how they explain what they do on their webiste:
“Capsule crafts extraordinary cultural projects for curious audiences; we seek to reveal the otherwise indescribable connections between art forms. Our aims are to introduce new audiences to our programme of activity, provide a platform for new work sonic/visual practice, expand the opportunities available for artists to develop and champion the unclassifiable.”
Having personally experienced some of their events I think they achieve that quite well — you never know quite what your going to discover next during Supersonic Festival — will it amaze you, will it inspire you or will you look and think what on earth?
So where to next — well, looking at Supersonic got me to thinking of other great stuff that’s happened locally. A few years back Birmingham had City of Colours festival all about street and graffiti art (find out about Birmighams best Graffiti here .
I set about looking for urban street art projects across the globe, and I was not disappointed. In particular Urban Artworks in Seattle really stood out.
Their mission is to connect youth and community in creating urban artworks that inspire connections and honour voices. They have a dream of everyone being able to access the transformative power of creating public art.
They achieve this through a range of services from mentorships, school and community workshops, artist development and opportunity for commissioning work. Imagine if every city had a project like this!
So what happened in the Arts, Crafts and Culture Break out room…….
Well we started with discussion about how much arts and crafts brought to people and how important the role of arts, crafts and culture was to everybody. How it was embedded in our pysche and how we needed art and music, how diverse cultural identies and activites are and how rich it made our lives, how the arts is a need deep within us all that needed to be fed. In particular we spoke about how the arts can help with mental health issues and how important it this was going to be in the coming months as we face a winter of covid restrictions.
The conversation then turned to exploring the issues locally faced around accessibility and equality within the local arts scene — how commissioning was poor and the same artists were given project after project with no foot in the door for emerging artists or mentorship opportunities at whole city level.
I was able to give an example of a recent project commission that Gatis had put a call out for with an artists brief. A number of local artists had applied and each was reviewed by the whole team. The resulting project (pending funding) will involve both working with a consortium of artists through Asylum Art Gallery and also offer a community engagement mentorship for another artist who lacked the experience to fulfil the whole project commitment.
The conversation then went on to explore how this could be made a reality across the whole city with opportunities reaching all levels and encouraging greater diversity. We discussed how a city Cultural Development Officer or similar role would benefit in creating a “pipeline of opportunity” and mentorship for artists of any ability to showcase, learn from peers and engage in opportunities across the city. Allowing for organic partnerships and consortiums to be created and lifting the whole arts sector across the city — making it accessible and balancing equality.
What if every community group had a resident artist to enhance their cultural activities?
What if every person suffering mental health difficulties could access arts activities that supported their recovery?
What if every artist in the city had opportunity to showcase their work at a city wide level?
What if every experienced artist mentored an emerging artist?
Wouldn’t the world be a truly amazing place!
