10 years of Creative People and Places
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I have had some of the best times in Batley, St Helens, the Black Country and Sutton in Ashfield. In places like these, people have been coming together, through our Creative People and Places programme, to shape their own cultural experiences and tell their own stories. It’s been magical and ten years on the magic is still there.
It’s something of a trope to say Creative People and Places (CPP) is standing on the shoulders of giants, those people who have been doing this kind of work for years, and it’s true. But Creative People and Places is possibly the first time this has all come together as part of a national programme that has allowed us to evidence the impact on a national scale. I could talk about the stats, the numbers, the investment - and they are all positive (over 8 million engagements, £108 million), but it’s the stories and the visits that give colour to what’s really happening.
Everyone working in or on CPP is passionate about it because they believe that everyone is entitled to creativity, arts and culture in their lives and the joy it can bring. To see themselves reflected, to be seen and heard.
That’s why seeing the opera, the Batley Variations in St Mary’s social Club was such a moving experience. When the local community sang of all the clocks stopping the moment Jo Cox was killed, you could feel the collective intake of breath as the audience in that social club tried to hold back their tears. These were people who lived there – it was their story too.
In the Black Country on a Desi pub tour I saw community commissioned stained-glass windows and pub signs that told the story of communities who were not always welcomed when they first came to England. People who have now made those spaces their own, their stories captured in the very fabric of the building. And more recently in Sutton in Ashfield witnessing thousands of people turn out after 2 years of Covid-19 for the first light night in the town. I won’t forget the giant illuminated puppet gently putting its hand up against those of the people who watched from a first-floor window, the crowds of people, kids on shoulders. You could see the delight of this happening in their place.
It is the people in the places, individuals or crowds, who make the equation of Creative People and Places such a joyful one.
Teams of people have played a part in making Creative People and Places a success over these 10 years, from the communities themselves, the CPP staff to the individual, often freelance, practitioners, some of whom have shown incredible commitment to the communities they work with. We are proud of all of them. Mark Storor comes to mind, an artist who, because men in St Helens have a 10 years shorter life expectancy than in the rest of England, committed to a 12 year residency, to outlive that statistic. The quality of the work coupled with such an authentic commitment to the people whose stories it tells, is the life blood of Creative People and Places at its best.
Everyone working on Creative People and Places has been learning and that includes Arts Council England. When the programme started, we couldn’t be sure where it would take us. That’s why we commissioned Mark Robinson to investigate and summarise what we’ve found out over the 10 years of Creative People and Places programme.
If you look at our latest strategy, Let’s Create, you can also see the footprint of Creative People and Places, just as the programme itself carries the footprint of all those community, participatory and socially engaged artists that came before it. Of course, that’s not the only kind of work CPP delivers. The beauty of Creative People and Places is that it can be whatever the community wants it to be. It’s also led to international festivals and supported the emergence of new cultural organisations. Its unlimited potential is found in the imaginations and creativity of the communities taking part.
Creative People and Places may have reached an important 10 year milestone, but this is not the end of the journey. This year we brought 39 Creative People and Places programmes into our National Portfolio and we increased the funding for many of them. And if you want to see some great art rooted in a real community you might want to start in Batley, the Black Country, St Helens or Sutton in Ashfield – to name but a few.
