Culture has an important role to play in the development of the town, it’s the “X-factor in moving Swindon forward,” said Bill Cotton, Director of Economic and Cultural Development, at a unique Renaissance day on Monday 17 September.

Many Swindon arts organisations and an Arts Council representative joined Swindon Borough Council’s Arts Services team at the Arts Centre to discuss future strategy for arts in the town.

Vibrant

Chris Humphrey, Director of External Relations at the Arts Council England, South West, began the day with a presentation giving the national and regional arts context. Chris went on to say that arts and culture has a responsibility to lead the way on climate change and ecological issues. Moving onto the South West he continued, “there’s an incredibly strong and vibrant [arts] partnership in the region.”

Responding to a questionnaire that had labelled the South West “sleepy”, he commented that the South West was the only region outside of London to have a formal Olympic Games event in 2012 (sailing in Weymouth). He continued, “we want to show the world how wonderful, how great, how exciting life is in the South West.”

There then followed a presentation on W&SAA (Wiltshire and Swindon Arts Alliance), the new strategic umbrella for the arts in the sub region encompassing all of the six local authorities, key funded arts organisations and the Arts Council England South West. This group will become the driving force for improving the infrastructure for the arts across our region and has an ambitious programme to promote the arts on the national platform.

Presentations were then made from 15 arts organisations outlining their current challenges.

The group of over thirty people then broke down into smaller groups to discuss if the current vision outlined in the strategic plan was still an accurate reflection of where everyone thought it should be (by and large it was, with a few minor alterations recommended), followed by the overarching priorities, and then art form priorities. A summary session concluded the daytime programme, before around 40 Artsminds members arrived in the evening for more “lively discussion” and debate.

Organiser and Head of Arts at Swindon Borough Council, Helen Miah, said, “The day started really well, with lots of presentations that everyone found invaluable. Arts Council rep Chris Humphrey, who knows a lot about Swindon, still said he was amazed by the sheer volume and quality of the work.”

Next Steps

Once the Arts team have had a chance to digest all of the ideas/comments/suggestions made on the day they will be developing the new update for the Swindon Arts Strategy.  Watch this space to stay up to date with this exciting work.