This year’s London Borough of Culture Festival recently launched at the iconic Rivoli Ballroom in Lewisham in a flurry of flash-mobs, music, dancing and poetry. Probably we’re biased – one of us is a long-term Lewisham resident, after all – but it looks as if its coming year in the cultural limelight – called We Are Lewisham – is shaping up to be one of the best so far. London Borough of Culture is an initiative of the Mayor of London’s Culture Team and, this Autumn, we’ve been working with them to identify, capture and tell “stories of change” from this and some of the other big cultural programmes that they lead. The aim is to help them and those taking part to better understand and articulate their impact. Underpinning Lewisham’s cultural programme are the stories of activism and migration that have shaped its past and also the creation of a narrative that imagines a more sustainable future for it in response to the climate emergency. By telling the individual stories of those involved, the Culture Team hopes to build up a cumulative picture of how its work benefits people and their communities across London over time.
The future of young people has been a focus of some of our other work this Autumn in two different parts of the country: Lincolnshire and Medway. We’ve been working with Lincolnshire Music Service and with other partners in the county on how to develop a partnership that will link more of the schools and young people across this big area to more of the cultural and creative offers available to them. As a result, the partnership has just secured its first year of funding from the Arts Council and next year will pilot a new initiative to link clusters of schools in cultural “cold-spots” to the best creative opportunities.
We are doing similar work in Medway: working with a group of partners that include the Historic Dockyard in Chatham, the groundbreaking Theatre 31 Programme, Medway Council and local schools to help develop a strategy and a model for the cultural education partnership for this part of the country. Another partner in this project is Ideas Test, and a few weeks ago we were delighted to hear that our strategic consultation work for them in 2021 has helped secure them National Portfolio status and long-term funding from the Arts Council.
Negotiating change is also a theme of the open forums that we’ve been running for Arts Connect. The first of these – Shifting Spaces for Arts and Culture – explored how the pandemic has challenged the ways arts and culture connects with its audiences. The second – Creating an Anti-Racist Cultural Sector – picked up another theme of Arts Connect’s conference last year – how we can all take responsibility for this key cultural issue and lead long-overdue change. The third, Leading Through Uncertainty is on February 8th 10.30-1pm It’s free and open to everyone. You just need to register here:
And finally, later this Spring, we’re running another of our popular workshops about evaluation and storytelling in partnership with The Fore. Telling Your Story With Impact is on 17th and 24th March. Book your ticket here
Image: Lubaina Himid, Ball on Shipboard (2018), retrospective exhibition, Tate Modern, 2021.