Vision
Through Bedford Creative Arts, a diversity of artists and communities in Bedfordshire and a wider region (especially the least engaged and disadvantaged) together create ambitious, adventurous, varied and engaging [contemporary] art that enriches their lives and the places where they live [and work], activates positive changes, fosters cohesion, stimulates deep personal meaning and a desire to continue working with us. Our belief that art should be an essential part of everyday life is evidenced in our activities and our projects, and collaborative ways of art-making are held nationally by peers and policy-makers as models of excellence and good practice.
Mission
Bedford Creative Arts' mission is to create transformative experiences and new possibilities through high quality combined contemporary arts for everyday people, centred on the values of full engagement, inclusion and inspiration - based on the premise that art is an essential part of everyday life.
We believe great art can enhance and transform people's lives and aim to innovate - produce original, imaginative, extraordinary, adventurous and often provocative art works and encounters in every day and unconventional places. We aim to embed these in a local context across Bedfordshire and beyond, working in particular with diverse communities, specialising in building new participants and audiences where there is often a history of low cultural engagement; instilling a cohesive sense of place. We encourage personalisation and sharing in different ways, recognising people want to experience art rather than just learn about it and fully express their identity and creative aspirations - we embrace digital technologies to do this.
We aim to:
1. Commission artists to make adventurous and engaging new work in the context of social practice
2. Deliver an ambitious, high quality place making commissioning programme that has a positive impact on people's lives
3. Increase our focus on developing new and diverse audiences in areas of low cultural engagement
4. Develop more opportunities for creative talent development
6. Deliver an incredible creative cultural programme for children and young people
7. Harness an increased diversity of creativity in all aspects of our work
We are fleet of foot and work peripatetically, explore genuine artistic collaborations and new ways of awakening and developing talent and fostering wellbeing with an array of new and long-standing stakeholders and partners: arts and non-arts agencies and charities; local authorities; funders; education and youth organisations; associate curators and producers; and regional, national and international artists, expert in deep socially engaged practice.
Our artistic programme continues to evolve, integrating the curatorial theme for 2018-22 of ‘Future Communities’ into all our strands of work – developing new collaborative opportunities between our producers and having a holistic approach to diversity in the arts.
Curatorial Framework Positions:
We allow our audiences to experience a shift from passive spectator to active art-maker.
We promote an ongoing discourse on art as a shared process.
We invite artists and communities to explore how they and their work can affect social change.
We are creating art in the public space.
We are creating art with a wide public and from diverse communities.
We manifest our values through our work.
We create a positive impact on individual participants, audiences and the wider community.
We nurture artists’ practice and the critical development of social practice in contemporary art.
We provide a platform to enable artists to approach their projects in an open-ended way to provide the freedom to really listen, absorb and respond and to have the freedom to discover what they want to do.
Our values
Engage – our work seeks to engage a wide range of communities in the act of art-making.
Include – our work seeks to include people from all walks of life in the act of art-making.
Inspire – our work seeks to inspire people and communities towards a transformation, a change, a new and better place, a new meaning.
The above values are underpinned or/and teased out through the following:
Listen – our work is about listening to individuals and communities and working with what we hear, understand and learn.
Integrity – our work seeks to be consistent, continuous and reflect our values
Ethical – we aim to be ‘working with,’ not ‘doing to.’
