NCACE are delighted that over the summer and into the Autumn our regional partners will be leading on a series of "What If" events bringing together their academic and arts and cultural networks to consider a series of questions with a local and regional focus, which also speak to national challenges.

What If : What Next For Our Post Lockdown Collaborations?

Led by Birmingham City University / STEAMHouse

Through their "What If" event, Birmingham City University is keen to engage /re-engage with local and regional arts and cultural organisations to explore ‘What If’ in the context of Covid and how we may work together, collaborating on future activity and initiatives.

Focus: Place/place-making & communities

Purpose:

• To begin conversations, post Covid lockdown, exploring how can we re-make the relationships between local, regional arts and cultural networks to develop sustainable ecologies of collaboration and engagement?
• What if…we were to collaborate to raise awareness of, and broker conversations that might lead to future collaborations, future funding opportunities and partnerships to address local/regional challenges that are already part of organisations strategic priorities and focus areas such as place based community engagement, community renewal, local economy, building resilience in towns, etc.

This session will focus on mapping out theme areas that are important to arts and cultural organisations in the West Midlands and considering how they might feed into strategic projects in the future; how can we work together to leverage new funding and collaboration opportunities? How can we make What if…? a reality?

Image: © Bill Leslie, Leap then Look: An NCACE micro-commission 2020.