Introduction to Housing Percent for Art
What does the service cover?
Where does the Housing Percent for Art funding come from?
Can anyone take part in Housing Percent for Art projects?
A brief history of Housing Percent for Art
Useful links and further information
Contact us
Housing Percent for Art is a service located within Bolton at Home, and is also a part of Bolton Community Homes, an umbrella partnership of nine housing associations working in the Borough.
We work with communities to help improve their neighbourhoods through arts projects. The scheme objectives are:
Housing Percent for Art gives tenants and residents living in neighbourhoods managed by Bolton at Home the opportunity to experience a vast range of contemporary art in their everyday life. It provides a real opportunity for Bolton at Home to engage with its customers on a more creative, constructive and social level. In turn it provides a challenge and an opportunity to a wide range of artists to create work for public engagement and response.
The following gives a guide as to the types of Housing Percent for Art projects that the service can provide:
Artwork can be of any form and can work within or across many art forms, such as visual art, dance, film, literature, music, drama and architecture; including all aspects of contemporary arts practice such as performance, live art, multimedia, video art, sound art, etc. Works can be of any duration, temporary or permanent.
Bolton at Home and Bolton Community Homes (BCH) have made a commitment to spend a percentage of their capital budget on arts projects that will help to improve their neighbourhoods. This money is managed by Housing Percent for Art. Housing Associations manage their own Percent for Art budgets.
We encourage maximum social inclusion, however the project must involve people who live in social housing - that is, either tenants of Bolton at Home or (with regard to Bolton Community Homes Percent for Art projects) tenants of one of the housing associations that operate under the BCH umbrella in the Borough. It can include people who do not live in social housing as well, but the majority of participants should be our tenants.
Bolton MBC’s Housing Department adopted a percent for art policy in 1997, committing 1% of its annual capital budget to arts activities as part of the regeneration process on Council estates.
The first projects got underway in 1998 with 1 permanent part-time Housing Arts Officer and a second temporary post for an initial 3 month period to help launch the project. The response from residents and tenants was so positive that the temporary post soon became a second permanent part-time post.
In 1999 a third and full-time post was added to the team - an Arts Business and Community Outreach Worker - funded by Bolton Community Homes, BMBC Housing and European Regional Development Fund. For two years this post was responsible for developing projects with the housing associations and strengthening the business base of the local artists involved in the projects. Bolton Community Homes is now responsible for the project management and delivery of BCH Percent for Art projects under the terms of the Bolton Community Homes Housing Percent for Art Protocol.
In 2008, following a departmental restructure, Housing Percent for Art was incorporated into the new Neighbourhood Working structure. Housing Arts Officers now work individually as part of the respective Neighbourhood Teams, rather than as a central service covering the Borough. Click on the links below to find out more.
Funding
Projects
Information
for artists
Housing Percent for Art:
archive of physical artwork case studies
Housing
Percent for Art: archive of non-physical artwork case studies
Housing Percent for Art: contacts
