Successful Spring to Fall 2013 & Backing the Leicester UK City of Culture Bid 2017

SPRING Event recently at Embrace curated by Bobba Cass was an awesome success in so many ways. Including very good  turnout on a day with cold and snow, to significant levels of engagement by a diverse audience in terms of age. gender, ethnicity, and range of abilities. Embrace Arts Centre have booked a further event titled FALL ( Autumn 2013  ) with  Bobba Cass  and myself  working with other arts collaborators, to create some new work.  Building on the transliteracy and transmedia aspects of previous our work presented and shared at the SPRING - with a focus on accessibility and disability led arts. Wonderful new contacts were made with artists with a range of abilities and  impairments along with artists from the LGBT community also.

Leicester  city is all of a whirl, with a series of events to brief and consult with a wide  range of stakeholders in the arts cultural sector of the city. With regard to Leicester making a bid for UK City of Culture for 2017 to DCMS (Dept. of Culture Media & Sport ) this April. I have long extolled the cultural assets of Leicester in particular its people of the diverse, arts creative independent grassroots sector . I am pondering on a number of ideas currently and have been making my own input into the round of this bid process, with the Bid Writers at the aforementioned events . In addition to supporting other contacts to also attend and participate.  Some of the  key things to emerge as a result of these events, are : cultural diversity, artist led, collaboration, bold vision & ambition, innovation, excellence, international, national , regional profile raising, joined up/ connectedness, open calls, capacity building and legacy.

Several strands appeal to me immediately, intercultural work,  commonwealth immigration, in addition to dressing the built environment/public art, green spaces on council estates. This is all very exciting and we are all encouraged, to back the bid from now and input initial ideas and thoughts . If successful in being short listed beyond April 2013 , there will be opportunities for more detailed consultation and I have suggested training /development in the form of  artist led- creative salons for a wide range of stakeholders e.g.on cultural diversity in the arts, collaborations and partnership, equalities  and working particularly with  the private business sector.