Why does ambition and quality matter?
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Mediale is an international media arts agency based in North Yorkshire. We develop, produce, exhibit and tour work from artists working around the blurred edges of digital art. In early 2021 Arts Council England put out a tender for a ‘digital producer’ to develop an online event exploring the Investment Principles central to Let’s Create. We put our collective hat in the ring, and fast forward two years, having been through many different iterations, geo-political, social and sectoral changes, in March 2023, in Bradford, we delivered Let’s Debate.
‘Let’s Debate’ was an engaged sector-wide conversation that took place in Bradford’s Kala Sangam across two days, exploring how we develop creativity and culture in England. It was built to create and share insight on the innovative, impactful, and exciting work taking shape across the UK. It offered diverse perspectives and lived experiences, drawing on insights from inspirational speakers from the full depth and breadth of England’s cultural sector and beyond.
At Let’s Debate, the Audience was the Panel. This meant that we valued the discussions and comments from all the delegates just as much as the inspiring keynote speakers. The 136 attendees represented a huge range of backgrounds and perspectives - from a broad and representative mix of different artforms, to where they are based, whether they work freelance or in an organisation, and their demographic background. We are now thrilled to share the insights and conversations of everyone involved in the live event with the wider cultural sector through the Arts Council’s Investment Principles Resource Hub.
We worked hard to ensure the delegates and organisations represented different art forms, organisations, freelancers, practitioners and backgrounds, which resulted in broad and differing opinions across the Let’s Create strategy.
While the live event was necessarily modest in size, our approach to convening this conversation was not. We were motivated to provide a rich set of stimulating, engaging and interesting content for the sector as a whole, hosted via the Investment Principles Hub.
The conversations comprised keynote conversations, ‘debatables’; group conversations around some of the more provocative elements of each principle, and then shared feedback and discussion between groups. Each half day was themed around one of Arts Council England’s four ‘Investment Principles’ as outlined in their Let’s Create strategy:
1) Ambition & Quality
Exploring thorny issues of subjectivity vs objectivity, we asked questions in this session like, “Why does ambition and quality matter?” and “Who decides what quality looks like?”. The keynote conversation was between Jo Verrent (Director, Unlimited) and Shanaz Gulzar (Creative Director, Bradford 2025).
2) Dynamism
What does dynamism mean to you? The keynote conversation here was between Amahra Spence, co-founder and Creative Director of MAIA, and Keisha Thompson, Artistic Director and CEO of Contact, Manchester.
3) Environmental Responsibility
Exploring collective wellbeing of people, planet and our work, the keynote conversation was between Caitlin Southwick, Founder and Executive Director of Ki Culture and Sara Kassam, Sustainability Advisor, UK Sport.
4) Inclusivity & Relevance
Why is inclusivity and relevance important? The keynote conversation here was between Rikki Beadle-Blair, Performer, Writer, Director, Composer, Choreographer, Artist, Activist, Mentor, Publisher CEO. Black Pride Host. Tarik Elmoutawakil, co-founder and Artist Director at The Marlborough Theatre and Laura Jones, Co-Artistic Director, Stopgap Dance.
The project began when we were entrenched in the dreaded C word. Covid made connecting and sharing more than challenging. While we initially planned an online event, the opportunity to bring such a wide range of perspectives together physically, meant that the insights and conversations were richer, deeper and took us all to a different level. Those in the room described the tone of the event as honest, constructively critical, curious and useful. We hope you find the recorded content similarly impactful.
We really are all in this together, and learning from each other about how to tell the story of what we do as creatives, can only be good for public funding of the arts in this country. Please enjoy the content we’ve now posted, which includes summary videos, detailed keynotes as well as audio only versions for your commute or dog walk.
Get the resources
Ambition & Quality
Ambition & Quality keynote with Jo Verrent and Shanaz Gulzar >
Why does Ambition & Quality matter? >
Dynamism
Dynamism keynote with Amahra Spence and Keisha Thompson >
What does Dynamism mean to you? >
Environmental Responsibility
Environmental Responsibility keynote with Caitlin Southwick and and Sara Kassam >
Why should Environmental Responsibility be talked about more often? >
Inclusivity & Relevance
Inclusivity & Relevance key note with Rikki Beadle-Blair, Tarik Elmoutawakil and Laura Jones >
