Access and diversity in the arts

Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) has created the Moving Roots Touring Network which will craft new socially-conscious arts projects for communities in partnership with culturally-deprived partner towns across the country.

BAC has partnered with:

• Action Factory, Blackburn
• Common Wealth, Cardiff
• Lyrici Arts, Chatham
• Jumped Up Theatre, Peterborough
• The Old Courts, Wigan

The partnership will create live performance projects communities that are intended to get local people to engage with their pressing local needs. 

Atom Gallery has invited over 40 artists to produce an original artwork on empty pizza boxes for an exhibition to raise much needed funds for Hackney Foodbank. A wide variety of artists from London's urban and street art scenes (and some from further afield...) will be spraying, painting, printing and drawing on pizza boxes supplied by local pizza companies.

For 2020, the 44^th year of London’s annual festival of contemporary visual theatre, 10 overseas companies join 8 British groups, including 4 LIMF co-commissioned productions: This Time, a tender take on relationships and ageing from aerial theatre company Ockham’s Razor; Romancing the Apocalypse from multi award winning dance duo Thick & Tight; Dead Good, a funny and

The world renown London Community Gospel Choir was approached by Holland Baroque an innovated and original Baroque orchestra based in Utrecht.

The two worlds of music although opposites could also flow tremendously well together.  The director for Holland Baroque came to see the choir's Christmas Show at The Royal Albert Hall and straightaway knew this could work.

The Culture Diary spent a few days in Edinburgh for the opening of the British Council Edinburgh Showcase 2019.

Taking place 19-24 August, we had a presence at the trade fair on Wednesday 21 August, promoting the use of the Culture Diary to a large amount of UK culture organisations also presenting, as well as international programmers invited by the British Council to attend.

Waltham Forest London Borough of Culture 2019 is looking for 100 trainees to become global creative leaders, with applicants agead 16-25.

The second round of applications is now open until Sunday 8 September - you can download the application form here.

A new initiative, called Design Can, has been launched to encourage greater diversity within the design industry.

According to statistics issued by the Design Council last year, the industry is currently 78% male and 87% white, figures which are significantly out of step with society at large.

So a group of designers, editors and activists have launched a new campaign calling for a more inclusive design industry, outlining how the industry should change and providing resources and strategies for individuals to support making that change happen.

Hothouse is the Crafts Council’s national programme of creative and business support for makers at the start of their career.

Jerwood Arts has published a new employers toolkit on socio-economic diversity and inclusion in the arts.

A combined effort with the Bridge Group, the toolkit gathers practical ideas and case studies to support long-term change in the arts sector. It includes top 5 tips, which are: