OUR KIDS, OUR COMMUNITIES, OUR COUNTRY have never needed art more
Film with STEAM Co. Co-Founder and CEO Nick Corston with Artist in Residence Mulumba Tshikuka at #ArtCamp20
Art connects
STEAM Co. is a lean, agile and innovative non-profit that advocates for, inspires and actions art by working in/with communities across the country, primarily via schools as an ArtsMark Partner.
Our core activity is helping school communities run mini creativity festivals.
Supported by cross party politicians, arts leaders, businesses and communities we have a plan to build on these collaborations with #FESTIVAL22 - grass roots activities in the UK's Creativity Festival in 2022
We are grateful for initial emergency Covid-19 Funding from Arts Council England and more recently DCMS and HM Treasury funding via the Culture Recovery Fund for helping us not just survive, but to progress this and completely re-engineer our delivery model resulting in a covid-proof, agile and innovative on and off line delivery model during lock-down.
Furthermore we have been grateful for further support and partnership from LGfL - the UK’s leading creative educational technology provider and charitable trust and lead provider of EdTech to the Department of Educaiton.
We believe this hyper local, grass roots community engagement and communication model will prove critical to the rebirth of the arts and culture scene in the UK and we are collaborating with and sharing our experiences with arts and education organisations right across the UK - England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
OUR INSPIRATION
STEAM Co. has been inspired by the work of famous musicians, artists, engineers and even the culture minister when his team invited us to Coventry for a big announcement two years ago.
The project was co-founded by a community group of parents, teachers and local businesses in a Primary School in Paddington ten years ago.
They were inspired by a visit to a festival (Camp Bestival), a book (What’s the Point of School - by Prof Guy Claxton) and the No. 1 TED Talk (‘Do schools kill Creativity’ - by Sir Ken Robinson).
Both Prof Claxton and Sir Ken Robinson spoke at our first regional launch event in Liverpool (See film below and interview with Sir Ken here)
NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE
For many years STEAM Co. has worked with communities across the UK, indeed we have run two UK tours from Cornwall to Carlisle, working with communities all along the route.
Furthermore we have relationships and have collaborated with art and cultural organisations across the country from Cultural Spring in Sunderland to Hull City Council and Coventry 2021 recently.
We have held regional events in Liverpool, Ironbridge and Sunderland and representatives of those communities have also travelled to join us at our events in London.
CULTURAL OPPORTUNITY
The most significant aspect of our work is around grassroots community engagement and the creativity and cultural inclusivity of our work.
All this stems from our broad audience reach and inclusive definition of art:
‘Art is what we call it when what we do might connect us’
This was showcased in various ways during our lockdown activity and which we propose to build on in the five months of this project should we be successful.
Moreover, we create paid work for both nationally acclaimed and a wide range of grass roots artists and creative practitioners.
OUR INSPIRATION
As you can see in the film below:
Culture Secretary, Jeremy Wright MP, helped inspired our year of #ARTCONNECTS19 activity with conferences, festivals and sessions in school communities when he told us:“WE WANT TO SEE PROJECTS THAT SHOW THE VALUE OF ART”
Nile Rodgers went on to inspire our #COLLABORATE20 year in a chat with us in a school in Toxteth saying:
“COLLABORATION IS EVERYTHING”
In lockdown, with an emergency ACE grant, we restructured our #COLLABORATE20 plan around a live streaming model, collaborating with over 100 artists and communities to deliver on Arts Council England’s CEO Darren Henley’s words:
“LET’S START A CREATIVITY REVOLUTION”
We now seek funding to not only help us stay in business to #INSPIRANATION21 but build on Arts Council England’s and DCMS/HM Treasury grants which we see as an investment not only in our work during lockdown, but the future of creativity and culture in our communities.
We have an ambitious, but low risk, collaborative and proven plan…
Look what we did to launch our #AimHigh20 UK Tour and Festival back in the late Summer of 2019
OUR PLAN
We don’t just seek funding to survive, but to build on the investment, experience and collaborations of our Community Lock-In - the fully functioning, green screen community web TV studio and collaboration platform we built to live stream community art events
And rebuild our sustainability.
We propose a number of activities to #INSPIRANATION21 to include:
1: ROCKET KIDS CLUB
We need to roll out this out of school art club which we have already soft launched as a safe online place for kids and creative carers who ‘aim higher than high’, where they can be inspired, create and share
We will pay artists and experts to feature in our weekly live streamed two hour #RocketKidsClubShow
2: ARTCONNECTS SHOW
A programme of weekly live streams building on the ten or so we have already produced in lockdown featuring a range of artists and creatives around the UK – both world class and grass roots community level
3: ART OF COMMUNITY FESTIVALS
As detailed below, in and out of lockdown in our UK Art TakeOver we ran two virtual three day community art festivals, a real one in a meadow in Devon and a hybrid events from Notting Hill Carnival and Leeds
#ArtOfCommunity20 at Eden Project
#YourGlasto in a school in Somerset
#ArtCamp20 in a meadow in Devon
Virtual float for Notting Hill Carnival
We had an aspirational ‘Rockstars’ and Rocket Kids’ #AimHigh20 Festival weekend with the school community of Parklands Primary, on the socially deprived Seacroft Estate in Leeds for at the end of 2020, all live streamed from a camper van.
Like the cardboard pyramid stage we built for #YourGlasto, we built a virtual set, a cardboard rocket on a launch pad which took off at the end of the weekend as you can see below!
This live streamed weekend consisted of a range of uplifting performances, inspiring talks, creative workshops and community engagement.
They included a combination of professional acts and artists alongside members of the community, young and old.
We are now working on a smaller event #Coventry21 in/with a school community in collaboration with Coventry2021 City of Culture in Feb 26-28 to launch our #INSPIRANATION21 year.
4: STREAMED #ROCKET KIDS SESSIONS
We are about to start trialling delivery of paid for, live streamed versions of the physical #RocketKids Sessions we are known for, which talks about art and creativity and is very hands on for the children.
We want to live stream it to, from and with school communities as appropriate.
We will deliver an all school assembly/lead workshops from our central studio or actually in the school hall that can be live streamed to the rest of the school classroom bubbles as well as to parents at home and even other schools in their cluster/academy group.
5: CO-CONFERENCES
We have piloted the concept of facilitating and hosting conferences and events for third parties as described below and propose pitching for more of this work to both generate income and share our knowledge.
We live streamed one in Bradford - ‘Decolonising the Music Curriculum’, which featured a diverse range of panellists.
A recent event with the community of North Kensington, celebrated 50 Years of the Westway Trust.
OUR DREAM FOR TOMORROW
Our ambition for Our #Inspiranation21 and #Festival22 years is to repeat days like the one we had with the community at Academy St James in Bradford to really show and share the power of art, creativity, community and connections as you can see below.
