About the CREATE PLACE CONSORTIUM (2020 – 2023)

CREATE PLACE (2020-2023) was delivered by our consortium of 17 organisations experienced in driving cultural change and producing creative work that impact  positively on their communities. We are currently developing the next phase of this initiative. 

Our consortium partners included:

Both Staffordshire University and Keele University have championed Arts and Culture in the region and beyond. Both institutions have expertise in delivering undergraduate and postgraduate learning provision in this area, as well as developing continual professional development (CPD) benefitting specifically the creative sector communities and industries. Both have signed up to the recent “Civic University Agreement” to reaffirm their local roles. They have specific expertise in creative approaches to supporting communities, participatory arts and inclusive co-creation methods to placemaking. The Staffordshire Coaching and Mentoring Hub (SCMH) is part of the consortium, itself a partnership between SU, the Staffordshire Chambers and the large volunteering-oriented charity VAST. SCMH provides the core expertise and longstanding experience in developing impactful training geared towards developing confident cultural leaders.

Both Cheshire East Local Authority and Stoke-On-Trent City Council were members in the consortium, as were the Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire Chambers. These local/regional bodies represent cultural and organisational leadership in the area, and include several museums and libraries (e.g.  Gladstone and Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Crewe Heritage Centre). They represent organisations that are impactful in their networking and mentoring potentials for emerging leaders allowing participants to be networked within the local leadership.

In the consortium, established and long-running local and regional arts organisations (BCB, B Arts, NewVic, Appetite, SoT Cultural Forum, Cheshire East and Crewe Cultural Forum, Cheshire Dance, Spare Parts) in both North Staffordshire and Cheshire East provided a powerful network for creative and cultural activity, and these have a long-standing experience in understanding our local/regional places and communities, allowing participants to be networked within the local cultural sector. They have key leaders in their organisations able to coach and mentor emerging talent.

A number of consortium partners  (Arts & Heritage, The Audience Agency, Voluntary Arts Network,  XTRAX) have a specific expertise for arts and cultural development. Specific themed expertise is audience development, audience related impact measures, arts and heritage, outdoor arts, and volunteering in arts/culture. There were learning blocks drawing from these areas of expertise.

Signing up to the programme meant being welcomed into this network of cultural makers and doers, and together we tackled the easy and the not-so easy challenges that individual creative professionals, groups, organisations or collectives faced in their work of bringing arts, culture and creativity to wider audiences.

 

About Arts Council England

CREATE PLACE (2020-2023) was supported by Arts Council England, the national development agency for creativity and culture. By 2030, Arts Council wants England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish and where everyone of us has access to a remarkable range of high quality cultural experiences. Between 2018 and 2022, it will invest £1.45 billion of public money from government and an estimated £860 million from the National Lottery to help deliver this vision. www.artscouncil.org.uk