We are inviting ideas for our project The Start of Something, which uses conversation to bring people together to make things happen. The conversations are intended to promote cross fertilisation of ideas and collaborative working, share practice and increase connectivity within the sector, propose solutions to problems and pose new ways of working. They will capture and amplify the ‘voice of the visual arts’ in the region and create opportunities in the sector for people working in it and for audiences.
We’re looking for ideas for conversations that will be useful and relevant – be they geographically specific, connected to arts practice or particular in some other way. Applicants are encouraged to canvas opinion about a conversation topic to ensure that it is useful and relevant to a community of interest and will have participants or an audience; it could be anything from building networks in rural communities, establishing a collective workspace, to sustaining a practice as an older artist.
A conversation for The Start of Something should:
- bring together relevant parties with a common goal or interest
- promote and support collaborative working
- encourage people to take action
- collect and share learning with CVAN EM
If you have an idea for a conversation you can propose it to us using the template. Your proposal should tell us about the idea, who will be involved in the conversation, how it addresses our aims (outlined above) and how it could be captured and documented. It should include an outline budget.
Selected conversations will receive a level of financial support in order to take place as well as promotional support. We encourage applicants wherever possible to hold their conversations in partnership – for example with a host venue – so that they can be promoted as effectively as possible, made as accessible as possible and to enable our resources go as far as possible.
Successful applicants will be required feedback to us, following their initial conversation, on what took place and what future action, if any, is needed to take the conversation to a further stage. We want all our activity to be as useful as possible to as many people as possible, and require that each conversation be captured and documented. This could be through moving or still images, in written form including online or in another appropriate way.
Open review events will be held during the year, giving a platform to groups whose conversations were selected to feedback on their progress and inform attendees of their next steps. These events will also provide an opportunity for new ideas to be discussed
A closing event in 2018 will reflect on and use content from these conversations.
We accept proposals for conversations at any time. Proposals are reviewed at regular intervals by a project team. Applicants will be notified of the decision no longer than one month after submission.
Please submit your proposal at: https://cvaneastmidlands.co.uk/the-start-of-something-proposal/