11 May 2016

We are very pleased to welcome two new faces to the Creativity Works’ team this month. Firstly, Stella Yates joins us as Business Development Manager. Stella has a wealth of experience in the arts, business and community sectors and I am sure she will bring a huge amount of that skill and experience to the organisation. Stella is just the person the organisation needs to enhance and articulate our potential to a wide variety of stakeholders. Secondly, Morwhenna Woolcock joins us as maternity cover for our Communications & Administration Coordinator role.

Again, I am sure Morwhenna will bring her extensive experience, organisational skills and creativity to the job. I am sure you will be hearing from, or meeting, them both in the very near future. As I write this, we are also just about to interview for another key role, of Artists Training and Development Manager, overseeing our co|Create programme of training, development and support for Socially Engaged Artists. We look forward to announcing our new colleague in due course.

We were very pleased to hear a few weeks ago, that we have been successful in receiving funding from the Lloyds Bank Foundation Enable Programme for four elements of organisational change. Firstly, we will be working with Investors In People to become accredited through their excellent framework with a focus on training and development. We will also be implementing a new database and updating our digital tool, the re|Source. Finally, we will also be commissioning an artist or organisation to work with us on ‘telling our story’ through innovative visual and digital means. Do watch out for this commission, which we will be launching soon.

How to tell your digital story was the subject of a very interesting workshop I attended today at The M Shed in Bristol as part of a day run by the BBC Academy and The Space. As we are looking at how we can tell the story of our organisation and the people we work with, it was a very useful exercise, with the very first question being, ‘What is a Story?’. Sounds easy to answer, but actually in practice, not so easy to define and definitely a great starting point for our forthcoming project. With the words of Mark Rylance still ringing in my ears from his BAFTA nomination speech, recognising us as a nation of storytellers, I think sometimes it is essential to go back to basics.

Olly

(Director, Creativity Works)