Creative Associate, Outreach,
Leadership & Mentoring Initiatives
2021 - 2024
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With the Bedminster Green development underway, as agreed, we handed back the 3 buildings
that made up The Works and moved our local Heritage Fund community history project 'Futures Past' to a new space The Works at No. 57 and our artists and makers from PrintWorks, Fabrication and Little Paradise to Stillhouse Studios.
Both No. 57 in St Catherine's Place and Stillhouse Studios on Willway Street
are ‘meanwhile’ leases in ex-retail spaces off East Street in Bedminster which have been left empty and unused awaiting developement.
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A resuffle of space at our main base Factory 8, resulted in the relocation of the long running and highly successful youth theare project that had been based there to a new meanwhile space, Chatterton Street Studios, just across the water in BS1.
Stillhouse Studios
The Works at No. 57
2018 - 2021
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With our charity's base off North Street ‘Factory 8’ up and running as a high-quality site for music, theatre and community classes, we became aware of the lack of facilities for artists of other disciplines such as visual and digital arts in the neighbourhood.
To meet this need we negotiated another ‘meanwhile’ lease (following our successful 4 year project 'Meanwhile BS3' in ex-retail spaces in St Catherine's Place off East Street in Bedminster) with the owners and developers to take over 30,000q ft of unused factory and office space in Bedminster creating a new creative quarter for BS3.
As part of our Creative Associate, Outreach and Leadership Programme, we have taken on these diverse sites on a ‘meanwhile’ basis with a vision to create supportive environments for the creative community - including fine arts, fashion, illustrators, makers, sculptors, visual & music production and performance etc including local charities and emerging young artists under 25.
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After...
Before...
‘The Works’ initially consisted of 4 buildings:
PrintWorks
Supporting & collaborating with independent young and/or developing visual, digital and fine artists, an exhibition space and a music recording facility.
Little Paradise
Developing art practice through peer support, dialogue and collaboration.
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Paradise also has one of the largest exhibition spaces in South Bristol.
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Fabrication
Textile/fashion designers, ceramicists,
woodworkers and
crafts.
Illustrations: Matt Wong - Post Graduate Student (Architecture
and the Built Environment, University of the West of England)
SixtySix
In this 5,500 sq ft ex-Argos shop and warehouse we worked with Bristol Arts on Referral Alliance partners creativeShift (who use arts as an intervention to promote and sustain positive mental health and wellbeing) as well as creating an additional photographic studio space for Gathering Voice's East Street portraits project. (UPDATE: This space will be closed at the end of March 2020 and all current projects will be housed elsewhere at The Works)
What is meant by 'Meanwhile'?
A Meanwhile’ lease is an agreement between organisations such as Gathering Voices and the owners/developers of vacant retail, office and commercial buildings. The strategy is to take them over and re-imagine/refurbish them as bases for our Creative Associate projects and collaborations, typically for a period of between one and four years, after which they are developed.
2016 - present
When the Methodist church decided to sell the property in which we had created 'SoundWorks' in 2010, we took on our largest refurbishment and creative outreach project to date
‘Factory 8’, an unused 6,000 sq ft of the original No 8 Factory of WD & HO Wills
on Upton Road, Southville.
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The three floors house a range of creative and community and performance activities
and Gathering Voices own ongoing mentoring and leadership work
with both young people and adults. The Bonus Room is available for the local community to use for workshops, training sessions, rehearsals and meetings .
2014 - 2018
Responding to the need for creative spaces further into the regeneration area
of Bedminster, South Bristol, Gathering Voices developed their first 'meanwhile' project 'Meanwhile BS3' - taking over two long-term vacant commercial properties within the run down pedestrian precinct of St Catherine's Place.
As part of our emerging Creative Outreach & Mentoring Initiative, we worked with arts graduates from the University of the West of England (UWE), mentoring a group
of emerging artists and undertook the transformation of the smaller space to create
‘Unit 10’ as a vibrant arts space. Unit 10 developed to an artist-led, social enterprise collective focusing on marginalisation 'one creative project at a time'.
The larger ex-retail space of 2,500 sq ft was refurbished and transformed into
‘Meanwhile BS3’ – a rehearsal & performance site for newly-hatched theatre collectives and
community performing arts groups.
2010 - 2015
Moving on from The Park in 2010, Gathering Voices took over an under-used chapel space
in BS3, South Bristol, transforming it into 'SoundWorks' - a thriving centre for well-being, community arts and creativity.
It was also the base for our own acappella and live music projects and home to our newly established Creative Youth Leadership Programme (CYLP).
2001 - 2010
Gathering Voices set up our first base in South Bristol, creating the three year ‘Youth Utopia’ project for inclusive community music and performing arts.
Based in an ex-secondary modern school we refurbished the entire performing arts area and collaborated to establish the 50,000 sq ft site as The Park Local Opportunity Centre for local youth-led groups and schools in Knowle West, an area of multiple deprivation.
We also designed and established the BTEC First & BTEC National qualifications in
World Music (Level 2 & 3), which subsequently transferred to the City of Bristol College.
To facilitate this work, we established a 250 seater performance venue and
a suite of creative workshop facilities including a dance and theatre studios, a 24 track recording studio and Digital Media Suite for local community use and beyond.
