Growth & Replication Commissions Cohort Announced
We are delighted to announce the five successful applicants of the Co-Creating Change Growth & Replication Commissions. The cohort members have been awarded nearly £150,000 between them to scale up and/or spread out to new locations pre-existing, co-created work and methodologies.
Over the coming months the members of the cohort will be mentored by The Young Foundation (YF), a charity committed to developing better connected and stronger communities across the UK, which will support them to implement their growth and replication processes and maximise social impact. The cohort will also work with Co-Creating Change evaluator, Susanne Burns, to surface learning from the growth and replication process and share it with the wider network.
The five successful commissions are:
A Place for Co-Creation with Restoke
Restoke are restoring a Ballroom at a former town hall as a community arts venue where the people of Stoke-on-Trent can dream-up and journey through creative adventures together. The Ballroom at Fenton Town Hall was converted into Magistrates Courtrooms in the 1960’s and now, the capital works are bringing the venue back for community celebration. A Place for Co-Creation will see Restoke adapting their process of co-creating performances to work alongside local residents and groups in Stoke-on-Trent to initiate activities for this new venue once open in Summer 2021.
[Photo Credit Jenny Harper]
Cultural Spaces Responses to Homelessness with Arts & Homeless International
Arts & Homelessness International (previously With One Voice) works to bring positive change to people, projects and policy in homelessness through arts and creativity. They do this with international exchanges, events, research and training. Co-production is at the heart of everything they do: 50% of their board and staff are or have been homeless themselves. In 2018, they started the Cultural Spaces Responses to Homelessness Programme to support venues to deepen their access and work with homeless people. With the support of the G&R commission, they will replicate and grow this capacity building offer to expand their trainers’ pool and reach more cultural spaces across the UK.
[Photo Credit Andrew Brooks]
Our Space with Theatre Royal Plymouth
Our Space is a creative programme working with adults with multiple and complex needs. Members come from all walks of life and may have faced challenges involving homelessness, isolation, mental health issues, substance misuse or re-offending. It began in 2008 in response to rough sleepers sleeping in the doorways of the theatre. They set up conversations. 11 years on, Our Space is a large-scale creative programme working in the community, in the theatre and making public work with artists with lived experience. Our Space has worked with 724 people, 44 referral partners and is available on social prescription. Through this commission Our Space will deepen their collaborations in Plymouth by working closely with the Plymouth Alliance and key services providing vital provisions for those with complex needs in the city.
Making Together with We Can Make
Making Together puts new digital design and construction tools in the hands of people and communities, enabling them to lead change through co-designing, fabricating and building the homes and shared spaces their neighbourhood needs. The first Making Together project in 2020 created a housing prototype for local people in Knowle West, Bristol, exploring what kinds of homes and spaces were missing in the community, as well as an outdoor space to meet, host events and artists residencies. Co-creation between local people, artists, activists, and technologists is at the heart of the Making Together approach, which will be expanded through this commission. The programme is a collaboration between the people of Knowle West, Bristol, community-led housing organisation We Can Make (part of Knowle West Media Centre), research lab Automated Architecture (AUAR) Labs and Dr Claire McAndrew from The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.
[Photo credit Ibolya Feher]
Our Culture with Rising Arts Agency
Rising Arts Agency is a community of young creatives, mobilising others for radical social, political and cultural change.
Grown from Rising Arts Agency’s 2018-20 research and action pilot Whose Culture, Our Culture is a process of creative interrogation centring d/Deaf and disabled young people, young refugees and working-class young people to explore how arts, wellbeing and social justice can be truly entwined. It is slow, considered relationship-building and exploration. It is care, time and space. It is young people being paid for their time and expertise. It is protecting wellbeing. It is preparing for action. Our Culture will gather a community producer, a team of representative young facilitators, and a network of young people for a four month-long series of conversations, interrogations, and action sessions. The final outcome can’t be predicted and will be shaped by the collective process.
[Photography Credit for this and header image @Shamphat]
This was the only round of Growth & Replication Commissions. To find out more about the process click here.