TB blog

Finding Wilderness and Kin

| vornster

[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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THE SLOW WALK TO IT TAKES A CITY

| dereknis

It Takes a City has had a long fuse. It was first sparked over 15 years ago by a story I was told by Paul Duncombe, who was looking after the Belgrade Theatre on the night of the 12th of March 2008, when much of Coventry City Centre was evacuated, due to an unexploded 50kg WW2 German bomb, discovered by workers excavating the site behind the theatre that was to become Belgrade Plaza.

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citizens making something happen

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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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In search of magical capabilites

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This spring Talking Birds has been working with colleagues at the University of Warwick on the ‘AI in the Street‘ project, which is researching communities’ perspectives on, and feelings about, the AI-enabling infrastructure that lines our streets. The project aims to add citizen-voices into discussions about future infrastructure installation and invisible data gathering projects, whilst questioning how open and responsible the current processes are. The project has collaborative teams working in London, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Coventry, with the site of the Coventry Observatory being the Holyhead Road – which marks the border between Lower Coundon and Spon End.

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Reporting on The Future Works Event

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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

| vornster

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

| vornster

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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Arts Covolution

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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

| vornster

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

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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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