Arts/culture

Project summary

Building Bridges aims to give young refugees, asylum seekers and migrant workers in West Sussex practical skills to assist them in adapting to life in the UK, and other positive cultural exchanges that they will remember for the rest of their lives.

The programme provides a forum for the participants to express themselves and share their knowledge and experiences of their home, their journey, their culture and life in the UK by developing communication and presentation skills and exploring behaviour patterns such as assertiveness and body language. Workshops equip the participants to engage and play a greater role in their community. The project is also raising awareness and challenging stereotypes, by enabling the participants to present themselves through performance and workshops as a positive and cohesive group.

Link to full project template

Project summary

Shoreditch Trust is an award-winning regeneration charity/limited company operating in inner East London. The designated area comprises 52 blocks of mainly social housing on 29 estates, and is identified as an area of multiple deprivation. Of the 24,000 residents, roughly 50% are White and 50% Bame: 23% African-Caribbean, 15% African, 10% Turkish/Kurdish and 2% Vietnamese/Laotian/Cambodian.

Shoreditch Trust has been working since 2004 on a programme which builds social capital (which includes positive race relations, tolerance, respect), with a specific emphasis on working interculturally and intergenerationally, using arts as the principal mode of intervention. Projects include memory boxes, Africa day, growing gardens, Shoreditch international village and a 1948-themed street party, which formed central elements of annual Shoreditch festivals.

Link to full project template

Project summary

A performed retracing of the Atlantic slave triangle in a small sailing boat with a diverse crew with UK, African and slave ancestry. Contemporary legacies and intercultural difficulties of the slave trade will be engaged with, performed and documented. For example, Black man don't float? is a 45 minute, two-handed play concerned with the encounter between a white yachtsman and a West African economic migrant in the Atlantic which is performed in schools and colleges in the UK, aboard the boat and on the beaches of Europe and West Africa.

Link to full project template

Project summary

'Inanimate Alice' is a digital fiction told in episodes. It is a dynamic interactive story with embedded games and puzzles, simple at first becoming more complex as the series progresses in keeping with Alice's growing skills as an animator and games designer.

Written by novelist and digital literacy pioneer Kate Pullinger, 'Inanimate Alice' leads the way in exploring the way we read from the screen. 'Inanimate Alice' tells the story of a young girl growing up in the early years of the 21^st century. Thanks to her father's employment, the family travels the world. Alice gets to meet a variety of people from different cultures, growing to learn that we all share a single world.

Link to full project template

Project summary

Rapid is an international partnership bringing together professional and emerging interdisciplinary artists to create innovative new works developed with a diverse mix of communities and young people.

Rapid will engage, explore and connect communities across Europe through a unique residential approach to creating new works fusing cultures and art forms. This process will be led by young artists of diverse origins, working inter-generationally and inter-culturally within their own and each others' communities. The partnership will unlock the creative potential of our young people and establish long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships with international organisations. Rapid will build cultural vibrancy and civic pride by using the fresh creative perspective of other cultures to highlight and celebrate each other's unique and shared identities, heritage and values - connecting communities to see each other but also themselves.

Link to full project template

Project summary

Strangerfestival is a video project for young people between the age of 15 and 25. Strangerfestival is anchored in communities in more than 20 European Union member states and links the local experience to a European framework.

Strangerfestival focuses on exploring how, by which means and on which topics young people with diverse cultural backgrounds in Europe today communicate, relate to one another, exchange information, show and share their world. The project has an empowering and inclusive approach. All activities start from the experiences of young Europeans.

Link to full project template

Project summary

The Carnival is for all the communities of Oxford, especially the deprived communities of East Oxford. The Carnival is a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural event.

The Carnival has featured the cultures of the following ethnic groups: the South Asian communities, African, Chinese, Brazilian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and European (British, Polish, Italian, Albanian, Czech, Greek, Irish).

Link to full project template

Project summary

Khayaal is an award-winning charitable British arts enterprise dedicated to the dramatic interpretation of classic Muslim world literature and the experience of Muslims in the modern world.

Khayaal further distinguishes itself by bringing together artists from inside and outside the Muslim community to produce high quality performing arts productions and theatre-in-education programmes that nurture and celebrate the universal human dream of virtue and in so doing creatively and imaginatively demonstrate the reconciliation and accord that is so needed in today's world.

Khayaal seeks to integrate the aesthetic and literary heritage of the Muslim world into contemporary and popular currency by founding a hybrid tradition of modern theatre practice that integrates British stage theatre and Muslim world literature.

Link to full project template

Project summary

The project was comprised of 3 parts. At The Art Center, Chulalongkorn University exhibited the video installation titled ELECTRIC EARTH EXHIBITION, and the work of Douglas Gordon, titled 10 MS1ֿ. 100 Tonson Gallery presented the 13 prints by Damien Hurst titled THE LAST SUPPER.  These two exhibitions were a Monologue as they showed works from the UK by UK artists.

The important part of the project, called Dialogue, took place at the Bangkok University Gallery 1, which transformed its exhibition space into an art studio where 4 UK artists - Andrew Stahl, David Bainbridge, Nathaniel Rackowe and Rana Begum - worked in collaboration with 3 Thai artists - Sansern Milindasuta, Sathit Sattarasat and Nipan Oranniwesna.

Link to full project template

Project summary

Hungry Arts Ltd set up the first Gypsy Arts Festival with members of the Suffolk Gypsy Traveller community to provide an opportunity for Gypsy Travellers to meet non-gypsy travellers in an inspiring environment. It also aimed to provide a forum and showcase for UK and International Gypsies, Travellers and Roma musicians, artists, filmmakers, dancers and actors. Following successful Gypsy Arts Festivals in Suffolk, new festivals were set up in Kent and at the Edinburgh Festival.

The festivals have allowed popular misconceptions to be challenged.  As well as watching performers, those attending can get involved with craft activities with Gypsies and Travellers and watch and taste traditional cooking.  This allows real interaction and dialogue to take place between different communities. The have also helped to break down barriers within the Gypsy Traveller community. Real conflict between, for example, the new Roma community and old Romany community, was tackled through the exploration of shared language and culture which helped to overcome suspicions and fears.

Link to full project template

Project summary

Koruso! The Southwark Interfaith Community Choir was launched in 2008 as a council led community cohesion project. One year on, Koruso! has transformed itself from a small interfaith community choral group to a 70 strong community choir with a wide ranging repertoire. As well as performing music that bridges cultures and faiths, there is also activity to support intercultural dialogue with members exploring and celebrating their differences as equals. The project has seen strong friendships form and has contributed to cohesion across South London.

The project was initially due to run for nine months, finishing with a concert in a major London venue, but the success of the project has resulted in members wanting to sustain and consolidate the choir and work towards independence from Southwark Council. Koruso! has benefited the seventy members through its programme of cross-cultural music making and building social networks.  It has also entertained and inspired audiences through live performances and radio broadcasts.

Link to full project template

Project summary

Side by Side’s project, Celebrating Difference, brought people together in weekly sessions to use drama as a way of interacting, bonding and learning about each other. Drama, games and theatre exercises were used to explore themes such as identity, communication, cultural misunderstandings, belonging, home, difference and similarity. Drawing on their own experiences of moving to and settling in the UK, crossing boundaries and overcoming obstacles, the group devised a performance about these issues. The play, Hopscotch, was performed to over 150 people during Refugee Week, to over 220 students at schools and colleges and was followed by a workshop.

Celebrating Difference took place from October 2008 to June 2009. It resulted in bridge building between diverse communities from places such as Africa and the Middle East.  The play was performed in areas with limited experience of refugees and asylum seekers.

Link to full project template