climate emergency

Finding Wilderness and Kin

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[Long Read] Co-AD Janet reflects on her participation in DutchCulture’s International Visitor’s Programme exploring Regeneration in Arts and Culture.

My first garden in Amsterdam is the one outside my hotel window.

I’m on the third floor and there is the crown of a mature birch tree at the centre of my view: dark, delicate arches of witches-broom twigs with small golden yellow leaves back-lit by pinky morning sun. There’s a wren – that I can’t see – singing its heart out and, every so often, a trio of squawking green necked parakeets sail over.

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What would happen if we used Citizens’ Assemblies to crowdsource arts policy?

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Communities would be engaged and empowered and arts policies would be invigorated, says Janet Vaughan, co-artistic director of Coventry-based artists company Talking Birds, whose work focuses on the relationship between people and place.

Attempting to banish the consultation fatigue of four years’ involvement in the preparation for Coventry’s time as UK City of Culture in 2021, and desperate to understand what value ‘ordinary people’ placed on arts and culture, Talking Birds called a Citizens’ Assembly in the city on arts, culture and creativity.

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Sent to Coventry: Creative Accounting, Talking Birds & mycelium

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Guest blog from the Creative Accounting research team, reflecting on their recent collaboration with Talking Birds

On 18 May 2023, an unusual event took place at the recently restored Draper’s Hall, a historic building on Bayley Lane in the Cathedral Quarter of Coventry, built in 1832. Eleven professional accountants gathered for a business-style dinner with canapes, drinks and a three-course meal. However, the aim of the event was not to engage in normal accounting business and networking, in fact quite the opposite.

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Now for that funding bid….

| Charlie

Pippa Church reflects on her Hatching Nest Residency

What a gift, this nest residency! 5, uninterrupted, (well, slightly interrupted by child care and snow) days of focus, pondering, wondering, dreaming, scheming and creating!

My aim going into this residency was to get closer to making a burning phoenix puppet, am I any closer to raising it….maybe just a funding application away!

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Holding people to account over the choices they make, and helping them make better choices, works!

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Today, in a Comment is Free piece in The Guardian, to coincide with the release of the ‘Sustaining Great Art & Culture‘ report, Nicholas Serota Chair of Arts Council England lists some of the headline achievements of ACE’s 10 year partnership with Julie’s Bicycle (a charity that supports the creative community to act on climate change and environmental sustainability.).

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