After two years working towards it, we are obviously a bit disappointed not to have been chosen at this stage to get one of the £100k prizes to develop an idea to be part of #FestivalUK2022 and are really impressed by those who have, some of the UK’s greatest creative people and organisations from mega brands Jamie Oliver to grass roots activists like Emergency Exit Arts.
We had pulled together a great team from communities across the UK and know of possibly even better teams that were also rejected, so aren’t too disheartened.
WE DIDN’T NEED THE MONEY
It would have been nice to win a share of £100k and used it to strengthen old and fostered new collaborations, but we didn’t really need it as we knew all all long what we want to do, basically more of what we’ve been doing for the last ten years:
Helping Connect Our Kids with their Art and our Communities with their Schools
Campaigning for, Inspiring and Actioning the Power of Art - Creativity, Tools and People - to Inspire Kids in their Learning, Power the Economy and Connect Communities.
Last year, the Culture Minister helped inspired us to show how #ArtConnects19 and this year, Covid-19 didn’t stop our #Collaborate20 work, inspired by a video chat we had in a school in Toxteth with Nile Rodgers.
DOING OUR OWN THING
We’re grateful to HM Treasury, DCMS and Arts Council England for a small #CultureReliefFund grant to run the #AimHigh20 UK Tour and Festival and launch #Inspiranation21 Year.
That will be part of the build up to our very own grass roots, community art activity in #Festival22.
We’re going to use 2021 with our work under the #InspiraNation21 banner to prove that what everyone seems to love about our work here at STEAM Co. can scale and be sustainable before rolling it out across the UK, hopefully to compliment #FestivalUK2022, or whatever they call it.
TODAY’S LAUNCH
Today we’re launching our #TalkWalkers20 Podcast in memory of, and as part of the legacy of Sir Ken Robinson who inspired us in no small way to start STEAM Co. ten years ago with his No 1 TED talk on how schools can kill creativity and who tragically passed away this summer.
To help us raise the funds we need to keep going, we’re also launching our #CreativeCarersPatreon project where we’re calling for Partrons of STEAM Co. - yes, PARTrons, pARTrons - people to be part of our movement with their art, whatever it is, because it takes a whole village to inspire a child.
Be part of #Festival22 - our part of #FestivalUK2022
which we’ve been working on for ten years now.
LET'S CONNECT
LET’S CELEBRATE
LET'S COLLABORATE
LET’S CREATE
A month or so ago, Martin Green, Chief Creative Officer of #FestivalUK2022 (working title), released a strategy document with STEAM and a lot of Co. words at its heart, announcing the first real steps towards a major nationwide celebration of Creativity and Innovation with a budget of £120m to promote both what makes Britain Great and what can reconnect us as a country post Brexit and now Covid-19.
He was looking for 30 teams to be given £100k to develop ideas for the Festival over a 3 month programme of work from which they will chose ten to be given between £4m and £10m each to deliver their idea in 2022.
No one said it was going to be easy. But we’ll do what we can.
Few have campaigned harder than us for creativity and often against some aspects of government policy. We have counter signed anti Brexit campaigns led by the Creative Industries Federation but feel now is the time to move forward, for our children and all our futures.
It was sad but understandable to see the frustration, anger, and in some cases, real negativity, that this generated - understandable given how it was universally positioned by the media from the BBC to the Guardian and the Sun as the ‘Festival of Brexit’ and understandably derided as such by many.
But as someone said :
“You don’t have to have voted for this government or need to have been a Brexiter to want the country to succeed.”
So let’s look at why we’re such big fans of #FestivalUK2022 and why this doesn’t necessarily make us Brexit fans, when like most of the Creative Industries, we actively campaigned against it and what it represented. In fact, few have campaigned harder than us against the dark forces many see were behind it and which we feel risks a #CreativityCrisis.
The ART of COMMUNITY
Martin Green was the head of ceremonies at the London 2012 Olympic Games and director of Hull's year as UK City of Culture in 2017. I certainly enjoyed and attended both, which are universally considered to have gone down as resounding successes and were, he says, examples of the unifying power of creativity, be that for a country or a city.
Reference also the brilliant work in Waltham Forest, London’s First Borough of Culture in the film here.
Green also cites the acclaimed World War One centenary events masterminded by artists like Jeremy Deller and Danny Boyle. None of those projects were overtly political. "And neither is this," Mr Green says. "Creativity, creative acts and big projects can sit to the side, above and below 'Politics with a big P.'"
He adds: "Remember, coming together and bringing people together isn't about asking people all to think and believe the same thing. It's about understanding each other and appreciating each other's differences and commonalities."
We certainly couldn’t have written a better strategy ourselves, grounded as it is in the power of STEAM and Collaboration - the very things that have underpinned our work.
We’ve been waiting for this and are keen to be part of it some how and invite you to join us, to help walk the talk in our response if you’d like to. Already many have offered to help from all walks of life across the UK.
THE TALK
Last year, I was invited to a speech in Coventry by the then culture minister Jeremy Wright who told how he had been using art and culture of his department as a currency to collaborate across a wide range of government departments from education to health.
It was a breath of fresh air, as was his announcement for a National Festival of Creativity in 2022 and the fact they’d allocated £120m to it.
He generously filmed an interview with us after his talk in which he said the government is “looking for projects that show the value of art.”
Read my blog here on LinkedIn about Jeremy Wright’s speech launching Festival UK 2022
AN INSPIRATION
The government’s plan for #FestivalUK2022 where manna to our ears and fitted perfectly into our five year plan, which we kicked off with the #ARTCONNECTS19 Festival of Creative Schools, Work and Lives - a year long programme of events.
COLLABORATE AMID COVID
As you’ll see, Nile Rodgers inspired this, our #COLLABORATE20 Year.
It kicked off with a great event in a school community in Dorset, a collaboration with Barclays that was live streamed on BBC Radio when covid hit.
What better reason to collaborate with the UK’s leading provider of creative tools and content LGfL and we’ve just finished a five month programme of Commmunity Art projects with an emergency Arts Council/National Lottery/DCMS Grant under the banner of our #CommunityLockIn
This consisted of four channels from a Content Creation and Community Collaboration Hub, a fully functioning, green screen internet TV studio we built within days of lock down:
#ARTCONNECTS SHOW - Championing, Inspiring and Actioning Creativity via ongoing social activism and a Live weekly show
#ROCKET KIDS CLUB - A safe and creative online community for kids and creative carers to be Inspired, create and Share. Live Weekly Show
#UK ART TAKE- OVER - Activities and action across the UK which kicked off with a parliament launch 1st May and five weekend Art of Community festivals through the summer.
#CO-CONFERENCES - live events broadcast for and with friends and partners including a Decolonising of the Music Curriculum event and one with our founder sponsors LGfL.
In the last five months we have worked with and paid over 100 artists and creative practitioners in and with communities across the UK from Cornwall to Cardiff, Belfast to Bradford, Liverpool to Leeds and Ludlow to London. Even the Isle of Wight.
It saw us build a half size pyramid stage from cardboard and code in a school playing fields for #YourGlasto - down the road from the world famous music festival that had been cancelled due to Covid.
Another highlight of the summer was #ARTCAMP20 - a weekend Festival with Camping and an #Eclectic Art Trail for community art, which we staged with a licence from the local council in Devon within 2 weeks of lock down lifting.
We themed it ‘Building Castles in the Sky’ to both echo the aspiration we want to instil in our young people but also to take us back to the setting of Camp Bestival, where exactly ten years ago we had been inspired to start STEAM Co. - to ‘Power Communities to Inspire their Children with Creativity’ but helping them run their own Creativity festivals in their school communities.
For the last five years, two specifically, we have quite deliberately been working to trial and test concepts for the sort of Community Art we feel could play a grass roots role in the government’s Festival UK 2022 and certainly what Jeremy Wright said he was looking for.
Our plan:
#ARTCONNECTS19 - to showcase the Power of Art and Creativity in our Schools, Work and Lives
#COLLABORATE20 - to encourage more companies like Barclays, Google, Cass Art etc to work with us
#INSPIRANATION21 - to lay the foundations for a year of community art in school communities and beyond
#FESTIVAL22 - to play a core grass roots role in this exciting year
#TBC - let’s see how the other four years go first!
THE PLAN FOR FESTIVAL UK 2022
So back to Martin Green and his slightly more ambitious plan for his Festival, which in hindsight may have been conceived to help showcase British Innovation and Reconnect the Country post Brexit regardless of outcome. Along with others, we supported the Creative Industries Federation’s anti Brexit campaign though are saddened by the negative press and response to Festival UK 2022.
Festival UK 2022 will now also try to help re-energise the economy and country post Covid so there is every reason for everyone to support it now, for all our futures.
When the plan for the next stage of #Festival UK 2020 was published, we were particularly excited to see that it was built on the same pillars as us - the interdisciplinary STEAM approach and people:
In summary:
Festival UK 2022 of Creativity and Innovation is to celebrate and remind the world what makes Britain Great and Reconnect the Country
Key themes: Creativity, Collaboration, Community, Co-creation, Optimism, Legacy, Inclusion, Openness, Freelancers
It’s being organised by the team behind The Olympics2012 Celebrations and Hull 2017
They were looking for ten projects - one in England, Wales, Scotland and N Ireland and six across the UK
They have a budget of £3m - £100k each for 30 R&D projects from which the above ten will be selected
JOIN US - LET’S WALK THE TALK
Ten years ago, a group of parents were inspired to start STEAM Co. with their school community after a weekend at a Family Creativity Festival called Camp Bestival, reading a book about the power of education and community called ‘What’s the Point of School’ by Prof Guy Claxton and seeing THE No 1, TED Talk about how ‘Creativity is now as important as Literacy’ by a Liverpudlian, Sir Ken Robinson who sadly passed recently.
Today STEAM Co. issue a call to likeminds to join us, whoever, where ever you are, whether a parent, business person, company large or small or any type of #CreativeCarer - someone who cares about creativity, children and all our futures.
The long walk to Festival22
Be part of #Festival22 - which WILL be part of #FestivalUK2022 whether or not we win any of this budget to do what we’d done for five years now across the UK.
Be part of it by popping a comment in the box below, go on… whatever comes into your head, and then sign up here now.
It takes a whole village to inspire a child and a whole country to put itself back together.
Let’s show how #ARTCONNECTS
LET’S #COLLABORATE20
Read more about #FestivalUK2022 here and see a snapshot of our work to date below
Bottom line:
“It’s about bringing Creativity to some of the most deprived Communities”
Marva Rollins OBE
Education Consultant, former HeadTecher and STEAM Co. advisor
BLOG UPDATES
10/03/21: We’ve got 2021 and our #InspiraNation21 Year off to a flying start by building a half sized cardboard Coventry cathedral in a school playing field in the city.
Through March, using our new tech, we’re live streaming #InspiraNation21 assemblies from it to schools across the UK (and world with one booked in new York) and twinning them with schools in Coventry.
We held a three day #Coventry Festival and an #EvolvEd21 co-conference and a session on World Book to Celebrate the life of Sir Ken Robinson as part of his daughters global #ImagineIf festival in his memory.
Yes, we’re flying high!
