Our News
THE LATEST FROM US
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Social Learning, new session in Creative Education
We are excited that our very own Gem Smith, Creative Education Director is leading our next Social Learning session looking at Creative Education. These are sessions that shine a light on best practice on different areas of socially engaged art. Via short videos, worksheets, & optional zoom Q&A Gem will share ideas for working with schools & social arts practice based on her past 10+ years working with us at Take A Part and local schools. You will consider the ingredients that make great projects happen; Understand the impact that creative projects can have on schools and communities; Think about the practicalities associated with working creatively with schools and artist/arts organisations; and take away top tips, tricks and advice for working on creative education projects. This is a learn remotely, at your own pace, pay what you can training session. The zoom Q & A session is on 20th April 3-5pm and has very limited numbers, so book now here.
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Support for the sector
OPPORTUNITIES, SUPPORT AND NEWS THIS WEEK
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Creative Catalysts: Create Gloucestershire
Create Gloucestershire are recruiting 2 new Creative Catalysts to support Create Local, a key strategy in their mission to unlock more resources, time and assets for arts, culture, and creativity across Gloucestershire. The 2 Creative Catalyst roles will be focused on two specific geographical areas to unlock more resources for arts, culture and creativity for the people who live or work there. Their role will be to bring people together across each community and hold creative conversations and collaborations in a way that welcomes difference and uses these diverse views to achieve collective goals. Find out more about the opportunity here.
Arts Producer: Knowle West Medical Centre
Knowle West Media Centre is seeking a proactive person who loves working with arts and technology in a community context and believes in the power of co-creation to achieve better futures for everyone. The Arts Producer will develop and deliver their innovative socially-engaged arts programme, and deliver new project, ‘Come Together’ which will explore ways to re-occupy and re-create the shared spaces and experiences we need now, in order to connect and come together. It will support artists and communities to develop new skills, approaches and tools for creating, making and sharing art and cultural experiences in hybrid (physical plus digital) ways. Follow this link for more info.
VASW Forums: Visual Arts South West
As part of the broader sector support programme, Together We Will, VASW is inviting visual arts communities living and working within or in the surrounding areas of Bath, Bristol, Cornwall, Dorset, Exeter, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Plymouth, Somerset and Wiltshire to attend a meeting dedicated to their local context. The region is vast and diverse, and the infrastructure and resources for maintaining visual arts practices, public programming activities, and professional networks varies between counties and local areas. These meetings are intended as forums for open discussion and their key objective is to map out colleagues and peers’ priorities for sector support across urban and rural localities in our region, considering the long-term impact of both COVID-19 and Brexit on the visual arts sector. Each meeting will be moderated by a local host, who will also minute the conversation for the purposes of informing VASW’s future sector support work. For detail on the meetings and how to get involved click here.
Creative Commission Opportunities: Bristol Green Capital Partnership
Bristol Green Capital Partnership are seeking two artists / creatives who are passionate about communities, coproduction and climate change, to collaborate on their Community Climate Action Project between May – Oct 2021. They are looking for two dynamic creatives, with a strong track record of socially-engaged arts practice in collaboration with communities, to coproduce innovative and engaging content which challenges perceptions, amplifies local voices and champions an equitable transition to a zero carbon Bristol through 1 x visual arts focused commission and 1 x interactive / performance art focused commission. For more on the commissions and application info click here.
Art House Open Lecture Series, Vanley Burke: Meadow Arts
Continuing their Open lecture Series, Meadow Arts have one final event in the current series featuring Vanley Burke. Burke is often described as the ‘Godfather of Black British Photography’, whereby his iconic images have captured the evolving cultural landscape, social change, and stimulated debate in the United Kingdom over the past four decades. His simple motivation has been the preservation of culture and history through creation, documentation and discovery, which often leaks into the private. To book a place follow this link.
Artist Commission Opportunity: Culture Weston
Culture Weston in partnership with Creative Youth Network are seeking to commission an emerging / early career artist aged under 30, who is interested in working with a youth group from Weston-super-Mare to co-create a public artwork as social action. The emerging young artist will collaborate with a group of young people to create a large scale art work that will be exhibited in Weston town centre in early June 2021. The work aims to platform the voices of those who are seldom heard and under-represented members of our young communities. The selected artist will lead workshops and sessions with a youth group and collaborate with the young people to create a high quality, dynamic work for exhibition that authentically captures the passion and vision of the youth participants for positive social change and your response to it. The finished work will also tour to Bristol and Southampton during summer 2021. For more detailed information on how to apply click here.
The State of Us: Real Ideas Organisation
Real ideas Organisation present 'The State of Us' a series of three events, in April and May 2021, featuring grassroots, national and international speakers exploring how people are building power and economic democracy in different contexts: our work, in our public spaces and in environmental action. The series is for anyone working on social, environmental, racial and economic justice, democracy and power at a local level across the UK, whether through local enterprise, community organising, activism, third sector, or local government. The series will look at The State of Us and ask, what role do community-focused, economic actors have in building powerful communities? What is the best practice? Who are our allies and who shares our values? And how can we organise better? What does democracy look like in everyday areas of our economy such as work, public spaces and the production of the goods we consume? How do communities actively create power, within and beyond authority? You can read more about the detail of the programme, including session dates, here.
Producer: Wildworks
Wildworks are looking to recruit an experienced Producer in site specific theatre. They recognise that many people experience barriers to working in the arts and it is important that the work they create reflects the whole of our society and that our team is representative of the wide range of communities Wildworks engage with. The role will involve producing the creative work and leading the successful delivery of the Wildworks artistic programme. In addition Wildworks need the selected candidate to be the momentum and drive behind project delivery and have a proven track record in producing site specific theatre. You can read about the role in more detail here.
Community Engagement Coordinator: St Paul's Carnival
St Pauls Carnival is looking for a Community Engagement Coordinator to carry out and deliver its Community Engagement activity. The role will involve supporting the implementation of St Pauls Carnival’s community engagement strategy, working closely with the Executive Director to design and deliver a wellbeing and digital inclusion engagement project. You will also develop and maintain strong relationships with project funders and key community contacts, assist in the development of business relationships or partnerships in conjunction with the fundraising team, board and executive director. For all the details and how to apply follow this link.
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In Conversation:
ILLUSTRATOR PAOLO FIORE
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Take A Part caught up with Coxside based illustrator to hear about how his work as an illustrator and artist has gone from strength to strength during the pandemic.
Looking back at the Coxside Carnival in 2020, lockdown was easing and we were able to have a socially distanced community event. I designed banners and flags, and it was my first taste of creating something for my local community to enjoy. This was my first project with Take A Part, and since then I’ve had the privilege to develop and grow my skills through community arts opportunities.
Before this point I was working as a bicycle technician, and had been assembling and repairing bikes for most of my working life. Having graduated from Plymouth University with a BA in Illustration in 2013, I continued to work in bike shops to earn a living, and my Illustration was more of an “extra” occasional income, or a hobby. In 2020, whilst designing for the Coxside carnival, I injured my back and was unable to work, which resulted in me having to re-evaluate the feasibility of being able to continue working with bikes long term.
Luckily for me, there were growing opportunities presented to me through my work with Take A Part, which has led me to the point of working solely on my trade as an illustrator, and this past year of transition has been an exciting shift in my creative direction. It is through the social engagement which has been encouraged and nurtured by Take A Part that my work became known to local enterprise Plymouth Community Homes (PCH), and in particular the online social media group Connect Join In. Because of the pandemic, PCH weren’t able to provide their normal face to face social community engagements, so these activities were moved online to social media. I was very pleased to be able to create Images for Halloween and Christmas online events for the Connect Join In Facebook group, and it has led to more work in 2021, which I am currently designing, and very excited to publish soon.
Part of the 'Pinguina' character design, one of the PCH Christmas characters.
It’s been amazing to be able to find a purpose and opportunity to redevelop my work in a way that I never would have thought possible. In particular the creation of the Coxside Echoes community magazine, in conjunction with Take A Part, which has been a wholesome community collaboration, that I’ve had the honour to help design. As an Illustrator, designing the front cover for a magazine or book is a very viable direction to take, and it’s great to have the dedicated opportunity to actually follow it through into a real physical piece that people can hold and enjoy. Currently two issues in, I’ve now been offered the chance to design the whole magazine, cover to cover, which although a daunting and challenging prospect for me, is another great opportunity to further enhance my skills.
Part of the cover of Coxside Echoes edition 1.
Once again, it’s through the chances given by Take A Part that this has been made possible, which has led to the creation of the Coxside Resident’s Arts Board (C.R.A.B.). This brand new community arts group in Coxside has secured funding for an amazing project with Plymouth group Jarsquad, who conceptualised a “seed activation kit”, designed to be given to local residents in coxside and general area to have fun with activating seeds at home. I had the pleasure of Illustrating these packs for Jarsquad, and we are in the process of handing out the packs to the community.
The cover design for the JarSquad Seed Activation Packs.
With more Issues of the Coxside Echoes to come, more projects with C.R.A.B. and the prospect of continuing help from Take A Part, I’m really pleased to have become aware of the importance of community led creativity, especially in the current climate. All this has led me to push my work in a direction that I never really considered before, but now hope to continue.
You can check out more of Paolo's work here.
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Connecting with communities
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We've been checking out who's connect with communities and audiences right now, and seeing what great work and projects are taking place. This week's highlights include;
Our wonderful friends at Beyond Face CIC are premiering film The Elephant in the Room, on Friday 17th April. The flm isn’t a story about a ship, or a journey to another land. This is a story about today and 6 characters who are still experiencing the impact of our colonial history, in cities that have only just begun to speak about their complex past. Throughout the film, these characters are met with denial, reluctance, avoidance, ignorance and ultimately silence, as they figure out how to be seen and heard in a system that was never built for them. It sounds like a beautiful piece of work and we are really excited to see it. You can book tickets for Elephant in The Room here.
The Arts Institute are hosting part-performance, part-game The Unbuilt Room, an interactive journey inspired by choose-your-own-adventure stories and old computer games. Each show is unique — presented online through live interactive video and shaped by your choices as you work together to overcome obstacles and explore unusual rooms and secret places without leaving your sofa. Sounds like an interesting experience! For more info and tickets check out the Arts Institute site here.
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This week's article is a piece by Ania Bas for Liverpool Biennial and looks at and makes comparison between community art and socially engaged practice. The piece reflects on power dynamics, collaboration, or not, with institutions, the importance of community voice, activism and the potential value of being a 'newcomer' in a community,
"There can be interesting tensions, including with the people I am working with and who can be framed in different terms: participants or collaborators. This relates to the issue of ownership, which for me is an important notion in the context of this conversation. Who is the author? Who is ultimately responsible? Within the Community Arts movement, authorship was more diffused due to the tendency to work collectively. Today, institutions often put pressure on the artist to attach their name to a project. Who is the artist that is engaging the community?"
It's a super interesting read with many aspects resonating with the practice and ethos of the TAP team. Check out the full article here.
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