TAKE A PART CIO

Our Artistic Director Kim Wide MBE and our Executive Director Anneliese Kesteven had a lovely couple of days with Local Trust in Manchester and London as part of localised "Meet Ups", speaking to Big Locals across the country and hearing stories of how they support their communities to create lasting change. Great as well to be working alongside other "Make it Happen" support partners Locality, Stir to Action, Just Ideas Sustainable Solutions Ltd. and Peas in a Pod Consulting, Centre for Sustainable Energy together working to give communities the capacity and skills to always have more in times of less. 💚

🍦 COMMUNITY ACTION PLAN: YOUTH ENGAGEMENT 🎮 TAKE A PART CIO partnered with Local Trust over the summer to pull together and share our joint knowledge and understanding of how to work with Young People in meaningful ways and created this guide. You can use it to capacity-build, to consider new approaches and glean insights into the impact that true youth-led programming can create. Download it here - https://lnkd.in/eFrSzXYf

Social Making 2024 Day 2. Deeper. We started the second day of our international symposium on Socially Engaged Practice by looking at decolonizing land rights with Nadia Shaikh (Co-Director of Right to Roam and Malaysian artist Mark Teh exploring land ownership as a colonial construct and how to work to dismantle this. On to another set of workshops with Citizens in Power (David Jubb and Saad Eddine Said) on citizen-led policy and decision making and an intro to Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) and creative cocktail making with TAKE A PART CIO. Amazing lunch again with Chibomata - food was top! Then a talk about skateable cites and the need to create playful and shared spaces and skate-led placemaking with Ben Borthwick (PRIME design) and Leo Valls (Skate Bordeaux). Finally a close by our Chair Mark Leahy before a departure to the pub!} Huge thanks to all for coming, to Bricks Bristol for being wonderful hosts and to Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for the funding to make this happen and bring the Socially Engaged Art sector together. Biggest thank you goes to our Head of Curitorial Programme for working so dedicatedly to make it our BEST SOCIAL MAKING yet! Stay tuned for more as our podcast series on Social Making 2024 will come out over the next 7 months, allowing us to share more insights and thoughts from speakers, attendees and more. All produced by the wonderful @miaaw.net.

SOCIAL MAKING 2024. Joy. The first day of our flagship socially engaged arts biennial international symposium was filled with it. And challenge and space and networks and thinking. We started with a talk about Jugaad, a consideration of how we can work fast, lean into collaboration to make solutions and, through all of this, learn about how to be more responsive and intentional and relevant to community need with Anurupa Roy (Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust) and Kim Wide MBE (TAKE A PART CIO). Then we went into workshops. Blue sky thinking on futures with Megan Clark Bagnall and The Hale (Daisy Hale) in Day 1. Space to consider new ways of approaching real applications for intersectionality and fun in practice. The food from Chibomatto catered for us was locally sourced and made with love and care at lunch. We had a networking session where we learnt about Bricks Bristol (our wonderful hosts). Then afternoon talks from Katrin Bohm (Company Drinks) and Daniel Edelstyn on arts practice as economic practice, sharing wealth and combating capitalist constructs. Dinner and then an outrageous artist-led pub quiz with Claudia Collins, Bouys Bouys Bouys and Dorcas Casey. Excited for Day 2 tomorrow! Huge thanks to Bricks Bristol for hosting and caring for us and to Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for funding this ability to convene conversations together around the UK Socially Engaged Arts sector.

A great start to Social Making 2024. Anurupa Roy (Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust) and Kim Wide MBE started off with a provocation to the arts sector - Jugaad. A provocation on means, ways and 'respectfully disruptive' approaches to work in ever more precarious systems and with fewer resources in the UK context by learning from the work of Indian practice, where precarity, censorship and lack of resources have always existed. Next up are the WORKSHOPS!

Today is the day.  Social Making, the UK's international symposium on Socially Engaged Art (SEA) convenes in Bristol at Bricks Bristol to discuss the present and future of the practice with over 120 delegates from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Portugal, USA, Australia, India, Malaysia and France.  We are looking at Actions for Agency in a time of global challenge and change. Considering Global Majority contexts, decolonising land rights, community-led sustainable environmental justice work, youth and skate-led placemaking and community-led decision-making practices.  Speakers include Anurupa Roy (Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust , India), Katrim Bohm (Company Drinks, UK), Daniel Edylston (Power Deal, UK), Right to Roam (UK), Mark Teh (Malaysia), Ben Borthwick (UK), Leo Valls (France) With workshops from Citizens in Power (UK), The Hale (UK), Take A Part (UK) and Megan Clark-Begnall (UK) and networking events and an artist-led quiz from Bricks Bristol.  The event and follow-up learnings will be captured in a commissioned podcast series by miaww.net, the global socially engaged podcast series (available on Spotify) as legacy.  Follow the conversation via Instagram @Take_A_Part_Plymouth and here as we look at the future of working towards more in a time of less and what it means to our sector. 

👀 READ OUR LATEST NEWSLETTER! Last week we kicked off the second project as part of our Blue Influencer Programme with a trip to Eden Project 🌱 As well as checking out the amazing plants we got to see Cornelia Parker's THE FUTURE which inspired lots of conversations around our thoughts on the future, climate change and the environment. Huge thanks to The Ernest Cook Trust and Plymouth Sound National Marine Park for the opportunity! 'Social Making 2024' will be taking place in Bristol this week, hosted by Bricks Bristol at St Anne's House. You can engage with the symposium by following us on Instagram and Linkedin. And the newsletter includes opportunities and news from around the country. 🔗 Click here to read the newsletter: https://buff.ly/4gXju3Z

SOCIAL MAKING 2024 HIGHLIGHT As part of Social Making 2024, Kim Wide and Anurupa Roy will be discussing 'Jugaad - The global practice of subversion as a form of radical practice.' Kim Wide MBE is Founder, CEO and Artistic Director of Take A Part. In 2009, Kim founded Take A Part and since then, has been working on supporting and developing the Socially Engaged Arts sector (SEA), models of co-creation and values-led placemaking in the UK. Kim has worked across the UK and globally to support communities, cultural organisations, institutions and local authorities to collaborate on values-driven approaches to cultural democracy and increasing representation within the cultural sector. Kim's research with Anurupa Roy exploring the necessity, benefits and considerations of Jugaad (to DIY or hack) creates a conversation about new modes and approaches to SEA against increasingly challenging UK frameworks. Anurupa Roy is a puppeteer, puppet designer and a director of puppet theatre. She is the Co-Founder and Managing Trustee of Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust. Anurupa works as a consultant in arts for public health, peace-building and education projects for communities, schools, juvenile homes, in conflict zones like Kashmir, Sri Lanka and Manipur. She has directed over forty puppet productions for Katkatha supported by India Foundation for the Arts, Festival Mondial Des Theatres de Marrionnettes, Charleville- Mezieres, France, Helios Theater, Hamm, Germany, The Japan Foundation, Atelier de la Luna, Spain and as guest director for TIE Repertory Company, National School of Drama and the Sandbox Collective, Bangalore. 🔥 Social Making: Actions for Agency - Generative Practice During Paradigm Shifts 📅 10th and 11th October 2024 🏢 St Anne’s House, Bricks Bristol 🎟️ SOLD OUT! Click on the link in our bio to join the waiting list 🙏 Funded by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

SOCIAL MAKING 2024 HIGHLIGHT For Social Making 2024, Ben Borthwick and Léo Valls will be talking about how wheeled users can play freely in the city. Ben Borthwick is a Plymouth based curator, writer and occasional skater. He combines working internationally with grass roots cultural development. Through roles at Tate Modern, Artes Mundi, and now as Head of Programme at KARST, he has worked closely with artists commissioning work for gallery spaces and the public realm for over 20 years. As well as major international exhibitions, he works at local level on projects that bring together artists and communities to effect social change. One such project is PRIMEdesign, a long term community project he set up with Take A Part connecting young skaters to contemporary art. This happens through workshops, events, and collaborative projects at the intersection of skateboarding, visual culture and the public realm, harnessing the ways artists and skaters can influence and redefine the physical and political spaces of the urban landscape. Born and raised in Bordeaux, France, Léo Valls has been a professional skateboarder for more than 15 years who has developed a creative practice based on city exploration. In 2017, he started working with the city council of Bordeaux in order to make skateboarding legal in the streets. Along with his prolific creative career in skateboarding, Léo became a cultural activist who has developed the concept of "Skateurbanism" by working with city services and architects on skate-friendly public spaces and furniture. He has curated several public art shows throughout the world focused on the creation of skateable sculptures in public spaces. 🔥 Social Making: Actions for Agency - Generative Practice During Paradigm Shifts 📅 10th and 11th October 2024 🏢 St Anne’s House, Bricks Bristol 🎟️ SOLD OUT! Click on the link in our bio to join the waiting list 🙏 Funded by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

💥 DEADLINE APPROACHING! Take A Part is seeking to expand our board. This is a very exciting time for us at TAP as we emerge from the pandemic period, changes to our investments and a period of reflection. We have been clear, robust and dynamic in how we work and are in a position now to build back stronger and with the ambition to support and further the socially engaged arts sector in the UK. We are aiming to do this important work through wider and deeper collaborations, longer form programmes of practice, larger scale commissions, international partnerships and programmes, increased research/impact sharing and talent development programmes focussing on non-traditional pathways into the SEA sector. Over the next two years, and through 2027, we are reconsolidating our board’s reach, representation and application to help us to best manage growth, opportunities and risk. We want to scale up, set the national agenda more firmly and support a louder voice for SEA as an art form. We see our purpose now is to further, strengthen and support the development and application of SEA in the UK. And for this, we need your help 😊 🔗 https://lnkd.in/emUXAvQx DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS IS 30 SEPTEMBER 2024