Exploring questions such as ‘Has COVID amplified arts exclusion?’, ‘How do we Build Back Better?’ and ‘What does a post-COVID cultural ecology look like?’ take some time out to hear provocations and conversation from leading thinkers, policy-makers and practitioners.
Contributors included Anne Torregiani (Centre of Cultural Value), Syima Aslam (Bradford Literature Festival), Aidan Moesby (artist, researcher and curator), Shadow Minister for Cultural Industries and MP for Batley and Spen Tracy Brabin, Dewsbury artist Stephen Turner and Proper Job’s Director Dr Chloe Whitehead.
If you weren’t able to join us for the webinars, you can catch up with them on YouTube.
Thursday 12 November, 10 – 11.30am – this event is now available to catch-up with online.
The digital responses to the COVID crisis produced an array of inspiring arts and cultural practice – but very little discussion about the readiness, relevance or accessibility of digital content for audiences who may experience digital exclusion.
Join us on Zoom for provocations from Anne Torreggiani (Centre for Cultural Value), Aidan Moesby (artist, researcher and curator), Syima Aslam (Bradford Literature Festival) and 6 Million+ (arts remembrance charity working with refugees and asylum seekers) to discuss how we remain connected to lesser engaged audiences in an era where opportunities to be physically together are limited.
Creative Scene will share direct findings from research discussions undertaken during COVID with their audience in North Kirklees. Traditionally seen as excluded or lesser engaged in arts and culture, we asked our audience how they felt about the acceleration of digital content from cultural organisations during lockdown.
This webinar has been made possible with funding from The Bosch Alumni Network. The Bosch Alumni Network is a cooperation between the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the iac Berlin.
Thursday 26 November, 12noon – 1.30pm – this event is now available to catch-up with online.
Join us on Zoom for a conversation with Shadow Minister for Cultural Industries and MP for Batley and Spen Tracy Brabin, Len Grant, Dr Jonathan Gross, Dewsbury artist Stephen Turner, The Cultural Ecology Project founder Madiha Ansari and Proper Job’s Director Dr Chloe Whitehead to discuss the future of the arts ecology post-Covid.
During COVID, the resilience of the arts in communities across the UK has been tested: funding has been diverted, libraries, theatres and community centres shut, and artists and freelancers have been left without work.
There have also been energising changes: community organisations and collectives have become more flexible and nimble, leadership structures have become more horizontal and every day we see the value of creativity in boosting wellbeing, bringing communities together and helping shape the identify of a place.
This discussion will draw on the experiences and insight from North Kirklees in West Yorkshire – and is relevant to all towns and cities grappling with what the post-COVID landscape will bring. A sharing of ideas and experiences, this will be an opportunity to discuss what the future may hold and how arts and culture can become more prominent in our local ecologies.
“When power is shared and hierarchies of cultural value and institutions are broken down, what is the glue that will keep this ‘scene’ together? Will the roots local people have put down through the CPP investment be resilient enough to adapt to changes in new political and funding agenda? Will these roots survive and flourish?” – Nancy Barrett, Parking A Poem in a Biscuit Factory
We will also be launching Creative Scene’s first book, Parking A Poem in a Biscuit Factory: unpacking a cultural ecology, with writer and artist Len Grant.
This book looks at what it takes to build a creative ecology in an area of West Yorkshire identified by Arts Council England as being below the national average for participation in the arts, its people often alienated from the prevailing cultural scene.
It shows what motivates local people to get involved, and uncovers the unusual spaces and places which are the setting for artists and performers to create and present to curious new audiences – from cricket stations and rugby grounds, community centres, pubs and social clubs.
Creative Scene’s Ticket to Ride at Dewsbury Train Station. Photographer: Charlotte Graham.
Catch up with two insightful online discussions about the digital deficit and cultural democracy in the time of COVID.
Various Times
FREE