Super Culture was launched in August 2023 – bringing together two of North Somerset’s arts flagships – award winning organisation Theatre Orchard and Culture Weston.
The two have come together with the shared vision to grow an ambitious, playful and inclusive creative culture in North Somerset through world class festivals, events and live performance, creative talent development and a year-round participation programme that enables local communities to connect, get creative and take a lead in shaping their local cultural provision.
The new name – Super Culture – recognises the organisation’s wider remit to promote and support all that is best in creativity and culture across North Somerset, while remaining rooted in Weston-super-Mare.
We connect people and bring to life local and global stories that inspire thinking, engage emotions and expand horizons. Our offer connects the whole community, founded on longstanding partnerships that encompass the voluntary and community sector, local government, education, healthcare and business. We aim to uplift people by embedding creative opportunity into North Somerset’s everyday offer and shift perceptions about what culture can mean to a place as somewhere to live, work, visit and play through epic cultural experiences and adventures.
Super Culture has three key aims:
We are specialists in creative placemaking and community participation – producing ambitious, diverse work with, for and by the people of North Somerset. Underpinning our vision and mission is a longstanding commitment to both inclusion and equality of access to arts and culture and enabling people to develop personal creativity.
We are driven by our first hand experience of the power of arts, culture and creativity to address vital social issues, provide a voice and agency for the underrepresented, strengthen community bonds, help individuals to reach their potential and act as a transformative force for positive social, community and economic change and regeneration.
North Somerset’s main town, Weston-super-Mare, contains a number of wards which rank in the most deprived 5% in the UK (IMD, 2019). Much of our participation programme is focused here; we work through co-production to amplify and celebrate the area’s assets and build new creative potential. Regardless of social and economic status, everyone can access multiple opportunities as makers, participants and audience, that support skills development, build resilient communities and spread a little happiness.
Super Culture works collaboratively with a wide range of partners including artists, community groups, local councils, schools, colleges and universities, the health sector, businesses and more, enabling culture and creativity to become part of everyday life for everyone.
Super Culture combines people powered creativity with outstanding international programming to produce a cultural offer with something to surprise and involve everyone – from sublime street art and world class contemporary dance on the beach to climate carnivals, synchronised swimming, poetry slams, feral gardening, community cooking and more.
