…when we talk about ‘community’ and the role that artists can play in creating ‘community’?

All of our projects start with a specific place, then develop networks of people who have a connection to that place. These ‘communities’ are intentionally inclusive and diverse, created around a shared relationship with and experience of a place.

…choose to work in are hyper-local, overlooked and undervalued. Our projects do not seek to economically improve or beautify these spaces but to recognise the creative opportunities that exist within them as they are. This could be the value of abandoned land for biodiversity and wild play, exhibition spaces created by retreating retail companies or simply the chance to try something new where no one is looking.

…carefully managed to enable artists to take risks and develop new, experimental work for a specific place. Our application process asked artists to share their practice with us and why they wanted to work with us but not to propose an idea. We introduced each artist to the site they would work in after they had been selected and have worked closely with them and other stakeholders to co-create their brief .

We don’t know exactly what our artists will create, what will fail and what will succeed but we know that we will learn a lot from the process.

…to seeing statues and sculpture in public spaces that looked as though they always had, and always would, be there. But as the 2020s have revealed all public art is transitory and we have increasing power to decide what stays and what goes.

The Happenings artworks embrace the magic of a transitory moment and the cyclical beauty of creation and destruction in public spaces.

… artists because they can imagine things that we can’t and we are happy to step into their worlds, if only for a moment.

…are held in public spaces, some will be ‘exhibited’ or ‘performed’ while others will simply ‘exist’.

What will people think when they come across them? Will they try to define them as art, theatre, dance or music? We hope not, we hope that they will stop for a moment and allow themselves to think, to feel differently about a place or a person.