What is Percent for Art?
Our Percent for Art team comprises two officers who are based in our Community Engagement Team and work across all areas of Bolton. Our arts officers work with residents, community groups, partners and other community stakeholders to develop socially engaged arts projects that help to improve our communities and benefit customers.
We commission appropriate artists or arts organisations, to work with the local community, and we manage the project from start to finish.
The Percent for Art service actively encourages individuals and community groups to get involved in schemes that can offer creative solutions to neighbourhood issues.
Ideas for arts projects can come from our neighbourhood teams and they will focus on specific neighbourhood priorities or be developed through conversations with community groups, partner organisations or other community stakeholders. Sometimes local arts projects are developed through wider Greater Manchester, regional or national networks or funding.
Our service also offers advice and guidance to our partners with regard to developing arts projects involving other social housing customers across Bolton. We have also been commissioned by partners to project manage a number of community arts and public / environmental art projects in Bolton.
Projects can be in any medium including visual arts, performance, music, crafts, digital art and film. They can take the form of arts based consultation, skills and confidence building projects, arts in health & wellbeing work, festivals and celebratory arts, as well as streetscaping and environmental arts projects designed to enhance the physical environment.
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2022 Creatives Now
Creatives Now is an arts collective for social change led by young people from secondary schools and colleges across Bolton. The project is managed by Bolton Cultural Education Partnership representatives from Bolton at Home (Percent for Art) and Bolton School (Director of Creative Learning & Partnerships).
The project was established in September 2021 when Bolton Cultural Education Partnership was approached by Bolton Council to deliver a creative community engagement project with young people, funded through the Community Champions (Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government funded) programme.
The Creatives Now evaluation report produced in September 2022 can be downloaded here Creatives Now final report Sept 2022 ed.pdf [pdf] 2MB
The project continues to offer a weekly programme of creative activities, funded and supported by Bolton Cultural Education Partnership. Since the collective was established, the group has worked with a number of local artists and a variety of artforms, and their work is displayed in the Creatives Now workspace and studio: an empty shop unit in Bolton town centre.
Creatives Now initially engaged young people aged 12-18 but the project has extended the age limit to 23 to enable young people living with disabilities and/or neurodiversity to participate, and to encourage youth leadership and volunteers.
For more information or joining instructions contact: Gaynor Cox, Housing Arts Officer
Head to Twitter to keep up-to-date with the activities of Creatives Now @Creatives_Now