Wyre Forest District Council

Inflatable tentacles by Designs in Air

Arts Development Officer

My time working in the Wyre Forest began in 2005 after moving from London to Malvern. I took on a fairly inactive section of the Local Authority and pushed it as far as I could, bringing ambitious projects to the District. Arts Council England invested in the work which supplemented the small allocated budget. This enabled me to deliver projects on a scale not seen in the area before.
As you can imagine there were many projects, these are some of my favourites.

Kidderminster Arts Festival became my flagship project, enabling me to bring in top quality street performers, installations, bands and theatre. I swelled audiences from 2000 to 10,000 plus. I commissioned public art as part of local development 106 funding.
My passion to support local artists to develop their practice and stimulate collaboration and ambition was reflected through many local success stories.

Pushing for 106 money to be spent on the Arts, working libraries, museums, developing the Rural Touring Scheme – Shindig and working with the Worcestershire Arts Partnership, Craft Space and others helped to drive up ambition in the area.

BLOOM

Commissioning ambitious projects such as BLOOM to bring new life into the floundering Town Centre stimulated collaborations between artists using different media. Bloom combined community workshops, live graffiti and video mapping.

For this project I worked with mural artist Peter Barber and digital artist Rebecca Smith from Urban Projections

I wanted to transform a much hated building, Crown House in the heart of Kidderminster into a temporary piece of art.  It was once voted Britain’s 6th ugliest building. I was working with the regeneration team to develop plans for the development of the Town Centre.  The building was at the physical centre of everything but also the centre of a lot of blocks, obstacles, politics and controversy. It was 2012 and the year of the Para Olympics, my idea was to make local people with disabilities of any kind the stars of the show and give them an opportunity to learn animation skills to make it happen. We projected the faces of the people we worked with onto an eight story building and watched their families burst with pride as the animation unfolded.

The Severn Project

The Severn Project was a collaborative project that reached from Bridgenorth to Malvern and many towns and cities in between. It happened over three years from 2007 onwards and saw involvement from a huge range of artists and organisations and hundreds of participants.

The project culminated in spectacular events in Bridgnorth and Bewdley in its final year. My role was as a lead partner for the Wyre Forest with Shropshire County Council who led the project. Bewdley saw audiences of 5000 come out for the finale show, huge amounts of participation all around the District from schools and local organisations. The model of working was taken forward by the Desperate Men Theatre Company who went on to create The Wye Valley River Festival with learning taken from this work.