citizens making something happen

It takes courage to step up and organise something to make life in your neighbourhood or city better. Even when it’s part of your job it takes courage: What if no-one turns up? What if it rains? What if people don’t like what we’re doing? What if doing this makes us look stupid? What if we fail? These (and many other) questions plague us (and every artist) every time we/they do something. When you have raised funding to make your event happen, the pressure is even more intense – this is public money and there’s a big responsibility to make sure it is spent well.

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Reporting on The Future Works Event

As followers of this blog will know, the F13 network – a broad coalition of independent artists and arts organisations, freelance creative practitioners and other interested parties convened by Talking Birds – was commissioned (on the back of its ‘Creating the Conditions for Creation‘ draft action plan) to develop and produce an event (The Future Works) to bring the creative sector back together, to move forwards after the turbulence of the last few years. (This process has been pretty extensively blogged, so if you need a catch up, maybe best to start here.)

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Time to find out if the future works

A Cultural Strategy sounds boring. And sometimes it is boring. But a good Cultural Strategy can tell a compelling story of a place – of its values and ambitions. Of its hopes and dreams. Of its direction of travel.

Some people think that our city has stalled. But we don’t think that’s true – and so we’ve invited artists and decision-makers to gather and re-set: let’s collectively re-imagine our story and work out how we want to tell it.

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Arts Covolution

Guest post by Stella Backhouse, a writer based in Coventry. This post was originally published in issue #6 of Action Rayz zine, curated by Jazz Moreton & Alan Van Wijgerden. Details of Action Rayz’ regular film club screenings can be found here.

After the very public collapse of City of Culture Trust and the promised ‘legacy’ of Coventry’s year as UK City of Culture well and truly on the scrapheap, where does the city’s arts scene go from here?

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Creating the Conditions for Creation

This post details a draft action plan entitled ‘Creating the Conditions for Creation’ which has its genesis in a F13 (network of independent and small scale arts organisations, freelance artists and creative practitioners) workshop. This workshop asked the question: “Where do we want to be in five years time?” – as a way of talking about, and moving collectively forwards from, the collapse of Coventry City of Culture Trust.

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A report on Co-Making Futures at Herbert Art Gallery & Museum

On 3rd July 2023 a seminar was hosted at Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, entitled Co-making Futures: How Do Universities and Cultural Organisations Create Equitable Cities? The event was organised by ArtSpaceCity, a research group based in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures at Coventry University, a group which hosts “projects that explore how publicly funded cultural institutions can contribute to the making of more democratic cities”.

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Scrutinising the fall

Notes taken at the Meeting of the Finance and Corporate Services Scrutiny Board of Coventry City Council – March 29th 2023 for circulation to F13 and other artists in the city. Please note that these are not the official minutes – those will become available via the City Council’s website in due course.

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History is made by those who write the stories

Losing the City of Culture legacy programme feels like a bereavement, but what the sector is mourning is not the Trust, but the glittering story of a city lifted up and made forever better by arts, culture and creativity. Not because this story didn’t happen, but because it is currently overshadowed and in danger of being drowned out by the story of the failure of the City of Culture Trust.

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