Thinking outside the Box: Creative Case and Diversifying audiences

Innovative practice to diversify audiences in arts and culture.

Diversity is crucial to the arts and culture to enable us to release our nation’s true potential of artistic and cultural talent.

During this session you will hear from cultural practitioners who are involved in projects which have created unique opportunities for artistic and cultural collaborations from a range on under represented audiences.

Confirmed speakers include Sharan Dhanda from Beatfreeks, Ruth Sheldon from the Pea Green Boat Project and Debbie Connell and Amy Taylor representing the GALA & BATH Engage programme.

This session has been designed for arts and cultural professionals interested in innovative ways to diversify existing audiences.

Speaker Information

Sharan Dhanda, Producer of Don't Settle, will share practices of working with young people of colour for different outcomes, changing working practice/methods with purpose, facilitation of Don't Settle workshops, and the results that all of this can have. She will talk specifically about events based work and you will have the opportunity to participate in some of those co-design activities.

Don't Settle is a three-year Beatfreeks project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund which empowers young people of colour aged 16-25 in the region to change the voice of heritage through arts, governance and research. We deliver this project in partnership with Birmingham Museums Trust, Chance Heritage Trust, Roundhouse Birmingham and Birmingham City University.

Our project centres codesign with young people in order to give them ownership and autonomy of the project - but how do you ensure you are truly achieving that? There can often be a fine line between codesign and consulting, so which measures can be taken (both practical and metaphorical) to make exchanges with young people valuable?

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Debbie Connell: Community Culture Development Coordinator (South & West Durham) and Amy Taylor Community Culture Development Coordinator (Central Durham)

Debbie will be presenting about the response to their exhibition Beyond No Man’s Land / In My Own World and the accompanying engagement programme. Amy will discuss how a participatory arts project with young LGBT+ members of Humankind’s group in Durham heavily influenced future programming in the gallery.

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You can find out more about Beatfreeks here.

You can find out more about Pea Green Boat here.

You can find out more about GALA & BATH Engage programme here.