Thursday 29 September 2011

Wiltshire College announce closure of The Arc



You may be aware that 2 weeks ago Wiltshire College announced their intention to cease any professional performance at The Arc from January 28 2011. There has been a two month consultation period offered to the Arc team to submit options for a business plan to bridge the current £25,000 subsidy given by the college.

There is a very real risk that the region will lose this professional venue that for 14 years has supported emerging artists, providing a platform for regional, national and international professional performance, a great training platform for students, apprentices and arts professionals and opportunities for community engagement.

Please do write to Chair of Wiltshire College Governors, Mr Steve Stone C/O
Wiltshire College Chippenham Campus, Cocklebury Road, Chippenham, Wiltshire SN15 3QD or to Principle Di Dale, di.dale@wiltshire.ac.uk in support of this valuable asset to the arts ecology in Wiltshire.

Community Grants

Did you know your Local Area board has a budget to support community projects and they are really under applied for? You can apply for up to £1000 with no match funding and up to £5000 (more could be considered) with a minimum of 50% mach funding. Look here for more information: http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/council/areaboards/areaboardscommunitygrantsscheme.htm

Where's Constable?

If you missed Hoodwinks 'Where's Constable' event take a look at this!

HOODWINK 'Where's Constable?' from Stephanie Jalland on Vimeo.

Want to perform at the Torch Relay's Salisbury sleepover?

Performance groups, companies and individuals are being invited to perform at the Olympic Torch Relay stop over in Salisbury on Monday July 11, 2012. This is a performance opportunity for the best and most talented within the County to perform to a local, national and potentially international audience.

Unfortunately there is no money available for this appearance and so you will have to be confident that you can support the activity from your existing resources. Please also note that there will be several acts on the stage and so there will be minimal time (if any) available between performances for set up and take down.

Please can you e-mail peter.tyas@wiltshire.gov.uk with a short description of what your group could present and how you would propose to deliver this activity, do also get in touch with Peter if you have any questions!

The deadline for this is October 7 so I'm afraid you don't have much thinking time!

Marketing Network



This is an evaluation star we each completed yesterday to see if we felt we had gained from the session,(the central circle is how we felt at the beginning of the mtg and the outer one at the end) well it's a bit more interesting than just answering questions!


Thank you to the marketeers who came along to our first network session. You never know how well these sessions will go but I think everyone felt this was a really useful time out from what often feel like an overwhelming workload. We have also come up with a plan to help us all play an active part in celebrating the amazing artists, and arts activity that goes on in Wiltshire. We are looking at WAP producing a brochure celebrating all things arty and cultural that Wiltshire has to offer to its residence and tourists. We will then all be able to raise each others profiles as well as our own at our venues and events. We also plan to attend tourist fayres, and large regional events such as Race days and agriculture shows, have a stand and shout about how fab Wiltshire is as a Cultural County! What do you think?

Don't forget we have a session for those of you tasked with fundraising at The Pound on Thursday at 6 (If anyone has trouble getting to this because they rely on public transport let me know), and a session for those of you working as individual artists or practitioners on October 12 at 11am (formally 2pm) in Bradford On Avon. Let me know if you would like to join us for either of these.

Professional Development Day for dance and theatre practitioners



This looks great! Best get enrolled I suspect this will fly of the shelf!

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Made In Somerset

Take a look at what's happening this year at Made In Somerset!

Cultural Olympiad Projects to share?

There has been an arts and heritage working group formed to help insure that we can raise the profile of all of the activities going on in Wiltshire that are part of the Cultural Olympiad, and to support any groups or individual wanting to take part.

We are meeting tomorrow and will be hearing from a number of projects at various points of development. If you have any plans you would like me to share with the group, would like to seek partners for a project or have any questions re the Cultural Olympiad please get in touch with me via email: wiltshireartspromoters@gmail.com

Sorry I've not given you very much lead time on this, but please do share any thoughts or plans you have around the Cultural Olympiad, including ways we might 'animate' the torch route at any time and I'll feed them into the group.

Community Arts Training

Meril Morgan has asked me to share this with you. I presented to this group last year and will do again this year and have been in touch with some of the people who took part since. I think this was a really useful catalyst for people to venture out into the world and promote their work so please do take advantage of this subsidised opportunity and let anyone else who might benefit from this know as well.

The arts service runs a 4-day community arts training course for anyone who would like to develop the skills and knowledge to set up and manage an arts project that will benefit their local community – it may be of interest to any community group including those with no experience of the arts or an arts practitioner who wants to run community arts projects.

Community groups, or those organisations that work with the socially excluded, can really benefit from running arts projects, but they often don’t know where to start. Our aim is to give them the skills and knowledge to take their ideas forward

Using the skills and knowledge of expert trainers, the course is designed to cover all the elements of running a project including pre-planning, fundraising, partnerships, publicity, marketing and managing community arts projects.

Participants need to be based in Wiltshire. Statutory and voluntary organisations with paid staff will be charged £40 per person, whilst voluntary groups, individuals and artists will pay £35 per person. The next 4-day course will take place on 4/5 and 11/12 November 2011.

Deadline for applications is Wednesday 5th October 2011. For more information and an application form, please visit www.wiltshire.gov.uk/arts or email arts@wiltshire.gov.uk or telephone arts development officer, Meril Morgan, 01249 705531

Tuesday 13 September 2011

Mindful Employer Line Managers' Resource Pack

If you employ staff please be aware of this!

This is a resource pack that provides practical guidance and information to support staff who experience mental health conditions including stress, anxiety and depression.

This was shared by Grow in their E bulletin.

Vodafone and JustGiving Extend their Free Text Donation Service

Ohh this looks interesting! Anyone used Text donation? How well did it work for you?

The mobile phone provider Vodafone and the donation website JustGiving have made their text donation service JustTextGiving available to individuals that want to raise money for charity. The companies launched JustTextGiving; a service that they said would enable all UK-registered charities to raise money through text donations for free, in May. So far it has only been available to charities but from today individual fundraisers will be able to set up their own unique code that can be used to direct text donations to their chosen charity. Participants, who must be aged 18 or over, need to register on the JustTextGiving site and set up a unique code for their fundraising, which is all free of charge. When they do this they will be allowed to choose the charity – which must also be registered with the service – that will benefit from any fundraising through the code. The individual can then publicise the code at fundraising events, inviting donors to send donations by text. This message would have to contain the unique code and the amount the donor wanted to give, and be sent to 70070.

Get Your Voice Heard! - Inclusion Innovation Programme Open for Applications

South West Forum is pleased to announce the launch of our Inclusion Innovation Programme. The programme will support creative activities that increase the influence of under-represented community groups. We want people to have more influence on the decisions which affect them and to see equality groups and small organisations getting more involved in voluntary sector forums and networks. Funded by the Big Lottery Fund, we have £20,000 available to support a variety of activities (maximum £2000) which could include training, events, childcare costs, travel expenses, translation, and publicity. The activities must be: *Inclusive – led by or have the strong support of marginalised or under-represented groups. Priority will be given to marginalised and user-led groups. *Transformative and progressive – challenging the status quo and making a real difference to the representation of marginalised groups. *Collaborative – involve or benefit more than one organisation or group, or are delivered through a partnership between organisations. We will be looking closely at ‘value for money’ so you must show how the help we give will create a real improvement. The deadline for applications is 9am on 3rd October 2011. Applications received after this time will not be accepted. For more information please visit our website or download the Application Pack (Word document).If you have any queries or need the information in another format, please contact Isabel Livingstone (Isabel@southwestforum.org.uk / 07792 206741).

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Opportunities to be part the Salisbury International Arts Festival team














Salisbury International Arts Festival are currently looking for a General Manager and Events Co-ordinator (Intern). For more information visit http://www.salisburyfestival.co.uk/about-us/work-for-the-festival.aspx

The Kingfisher Project Seminar - 'I think I must be cured'

Gemma from Salisbury Arts Centre ad Peter from Art Care invite us to an event celebrating the achievements of the three year Kingfsher project. You will have an opportunity to meet the three the visual artists commissioned to work on this project, as well as the premiere of the spoken word / dance film made by Jigsaw and the Kingfisher Project. I'll be going!.

Thursday 29 September, Salisbury Arts Centre, 2.45pm

Since 1999 Salisbury Arts Centre and ArtCare, the art service at Salisbury District Hospital, have collaborated on a unique literature project, using creative writing to promote wellbeing, health and self development.

In 2011 the Kingfisher Project came to the end of a three year Arts Council funding term. During this time a series of artworks was commissioned in response to the healing words generated by the project and an evaluation study was carried out by a researcher from the University of the West of England.

To celebrate the project’s achievements in recent years and review the wider context of using literature in the context of health and wellbeing, we invite you to attend ‘I think I must be cured’, a short seminar at Salisbury Arts Centre on Thursday 29 September from 2.45pm.

To receive further information or to book a place please contact Salisbury Arts Centre, Bedwin Street, Salisbury, SP1 3UT, phone 01722 321744 (Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 4pm) or email us at boxoffice@salisburyarts.co.uk

New WAP Member to exhibit at The Arc


Mike Hill is a Wiltshire Based landscape and fine art photography and is our newest WAP member. You can see and indeed buy some of his work at www.wildgravity.co.uk. Mike will be exhibiting at The Arc Theatre Trowbridge during October. Mike has 18 prints framed and ready to exhibit (and is happy to add more for larger spaces) please do get in touch if you know of any other exhibition opportunities for Mike.

Wiltshire’s Flame

Those of you who were able to join us at our last full members meeting may recall Ruths presentation on Arts Awards. We were going to looking to provide some subsidised Arts Award training through WAP, but Wiltshire Council have partnered with Arts Awards to do just that, as well as offering 5 freelance practitioners FREE training!


To celebrate the Olympic year Wiltshire Council and Arts Award South West are collaborating on a project to celebrate the creativity and energy of young people within Wiltshire. The aim of the project is to enable hundreds of young people to take part in dozens of projects all across the County inspired by the Olympic Flame.

If you work with young people and are interested in supporting them to be more creative, develop leadership skills and gain a nationally recognised qualification then this may be the project for you. Wiltshire Council Arts Service and Arts Award are working together to provide subsidised training for people to become Arts Award Advisers - which means you can deliver the award with any young people aged 11-25. Training usually costs £140 but under this scheme you only pay £65. The Arts Service will also provide five free bursaries for freelance artists. If you are interested in taking part in the project please register your interest by e-mailing arts@wiltshire.gov.uk

There will be two training days led by Ruth Jones, Arts Award South West Regional Coordinator and Senior Trainer. The training course will give you all the skills and knowledge that you need to deliver Arts Award at Bronze and Silver levels. The first one day course is Thursday 3rd of November 2011, and the second date will be in the New Year. The project will culminate in two awards ceremonies, the first will be timed to mark the journey of the Olympic Flame through Wiltshire and the second will be timed to coincide with the closing of the Olympic Games. At these ceremonies a panel of judges will select the best three projects to be awarded a Bronze, Silver and Gold commemorative coin.

Find out more about Arts Awards here: http://www.artsaward.org.uk/site/?id=64

Develop event and AGM

We are invited to Develops AGM and Autumn Event on the 19th October at Chippenham Town Hall. Each organisation which is a member of Develop has voting rights at this meeting.

Thursday 1 September 2011

Opportunity to promote a company from Zimbabwe

We have been contacted through our website by Umkhathi Theatre Works, a company from Zimbabwe. They are looking for someone to promote their work in the UK. Take a look at their website: http://www.umkhathitheatre.com/

If you are interested in promoting their work please contact Matesu umkhathiarts@yahoo.com