The Old Electric is Blackpool’s newest community arts space, providing a unique location for creativity just a stone’s throw from the town’s iconic promenade. Offering shows to enjoy, activities to take part in, opportunities to learn, develop and grow, plus many more experiences besides, our purpose is to ensure that arts and creativity is accessible for all Blackpool communities. So why not join in?
TheOE has been The Electric Sunshine Project's (TESP) home since 2020, it is the main place where we realise our aims and ambitions for the town of Blackpool. Our purpose is to ensure that arts and creativity is accessible for all Blackpool communities. We want to develop a stronger, more resilient resident community who are empowered to create a new narrative about the town, and we create and support new work that provokes, surprises and entertains audiences in Blackpool.
We aim to provide transformative creative experiences that improve lives of local residents; to inspire individuals to connect with their own creativity through a menu of high-quality socially-engaged arts activities in Blackpool.
WE:
Collaborate with others to reduce barriers to communities connecting with high quality arts programmes.
Support emerging creatives in their professional aspirations via regular development and employment opportunities.
Have developed a new hub of social connectivity and creative practice in the town.
Innovation; actively different from much of the commercial-entertainment offer currently available in the area but inspired by the local people, places and things we will engage in dialogue with other companies and venues regionally, nationally and internationally.
Illumination; responding to the needs of the local community, offering new light by which we see ourselves, the society we live in and the world at large; learning, self-expression and self-reflection and the connection between healthy mind, body and spirit are at the core of everything we do.
Opportunity; supporting the development of emerging artists as well as linking with established industry experts, all activities are offered at reasonable rates to locals and regularity of service ensures the growth of long-term relationships and a stronger creative community.
The Old Electric: A Force for Positive Resistance
We believe in love, kindness and generosity. We choose acceptance and we reject labels. In this positive resistance movement, we, the people, are the assets and are unapologetically utopian in our vision for a better future society for all.
This space is built on collaboration, community and camaraderie; it is a place for creation, provocation, laughter, sounds, words, movement, colour, light and otherness; everything that happens here may not be to your personal taste, but we expect respect and courtesy.
The Old Electric will be a home for discovery, inspiration and optimism; a place where mistakes are valued as part of growing and learning. Everyone has the right to feel safe here.
We are dedicated to removing barriers to participation and to developing conditions in which creativity can thrive beyond limits of circumstance, class and context. Access to arts is a right and through creativity we can build, from the bottom upwards, a new society of individuals who are healthier, happier and more closely connected.
Our responsibility is to the people of Blackpool. We seek to influence people in positions of power, policy and practice in this town and beyond. We intend to find new ways of understanding impact and value, to inspire agency and change within our communities and to play an essential role in public life.
We believe it is possible to combat bureaucratic cliché & sloganism with fearlessness and fun. We are opposed to cynicism, short-termism and institutional apathy. We put our trust in both science and magic!
We object to the shift towards consumerist values, and will never put accrual of money above anything else. Creativity is beyond materialism; it is currency in its own right. We value art and artists; it is our duty to produce pathways for professional practice here. We will share our stories of both success and shortfall.
We commit to treading lightly on our beautiful planet and to working towards an environmentally sustainable future. We celebrate our similarities & our differences; we know that we’re always evolving individually and together and that we are greater than the sum of our individual parts.
We promote freedom of opinion and expression and equality of opportunity for all; embracing diverse disciplines and the right for everyone to see themselves reflected in the games we play, the stories we tell and the songs we sing.
We trust the process of play and how it can enable us to break out of oppressive circumstances, heal trauma, build bridges, generate community and reignite imagination and we “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.”
We will prioritise building relationships with those who feel the same.
