Case study: Celebrate Chelston!

Torbay Culture has paired up with Torbay Community Development Trust to increase residents’ pride in where they live and encourage new participants and audiences for arts and heritage.

Torbay has lower than average rates of engagement in culture. We are working through our Great Place Scheme to change this because we know that engaging in culture improves people’s wellbeing. Evidence from projects in other places suggests that handing over the commissioning of arts directly to the community can ensure real relevance and ownership, which is inspiring us to try a new way of working here. Our pilot community is Chelston, a diverse neighbourhood in the west of Torquay with a range of existing community assets which we can build upon.

Through the summer months, Community Builders from Torbay Community Development Trust (TCDT) attended community events in Chelston to start a conversation:

“What do you love about Chelston?”

“What would you celebrate about this place?”

“What is special about living here?”

Creative facilitators Sally Clements and Jo Beal have worked with us during the autumn, gathering together all the feedback and hosting community workshops. The workshops brought residents together to explore the unique aspects of Chelston in more depth and introduced them to a range of art forms and community-based arts projects from elsewhere.

This process has led to the co-creation of a brief for an artist (or artists) to work with the community during 2020 and create a project that reflects upon and celebrates what they value about where they live. The community will lead the shortlisting and interview process, supported by Torbay Culture and TCDT. The whole project will culminate in June next year, with an event or showcase that engages as many people in the community as possible. We hope that residents of Chelston will then be inspired to create new cultural projects and have the confidence to develop their own ideas. We will use our learning from this new way of working to roll out community-led projects in other Torbay neighbourhoods.

Interested artists and creative practitioners can find the brief at www.torbayculture.org/news/2019/12/16/artist-brief-celebrate-chelston. The closing date for expressions of interest is Wednesday 15 January.

Image credit: Josh Pratt