Connecting Newham through ‘Unexpected Partnerships’
Photo by Ilyas Ayub
Written by Loose Baker
Meet the six ‘Unexpected Partnership’ projects:
Newham Mosaic: Celebrating African Arts and Cultural Diversity – creating a cultural collage highlighting the rich heritage of African arts in Newham
Community Murals Celebrating Home – a group of co-created, community murals.
Bake It! Werk It! - pop-up bakery stall combined with LGBTQIA+ performances appearing at markets around Newham
Central and Eastern European Photography Club – a photography club looking to foster inter-community dialogue around memories, migration and community engagement ending in an exhibition.
Cooking Connections - reminiscence storytelling workshops resulting in a cookbook and book launch event
Creative Pathways – art workshops for school pupils to learn about creative careers and whether or not to go into higher education.
Photo of Cooking Connections workshop, taken by JazanneArts
In April 2023 Culture Within Newham (CWN) released an open call for our first ever commission. We were looking for ideas that brought together an arts-based organisation and a non-arts organisation who had never worked together before, under the project title ‘Unexpected Partnerships’. Up to £15,000 was on offer and we were looking for six projects to take forward. After our initial setting up period, this commission was like throwing a net out into Newham to see what would come back.
Halfway through the application period, we ran a half-day event called an ‘Ideas Lab’ at Rosetta Arts. Anyone was welcome to attend to hear more about the commission and meet potential partners. We worked with Chris Rolls FRSA from Collective Sense who facilitated discussion and learning around co-creation - a core part of this commission was working in partnership. Deep conversations were had and delicious Caribbean food was eaten from Jackies Love Kitchen. We also ran a ‘How to write great grant applications’ workshop online to support anyone who may not have experience writing applications.
Photo by Ilyas Ayub
Photo by Ilyas Ayub
As a very new team launching our first project commission, we were somewhat nervous when we launched our call out. To our absolute joy and administrative horror (joke!) we had 37 applications. Word about CWN had started to get out and the creativity on display in the applications was truly astounding.
Deciding who received funds was now entirely in the hands of the CWN Community Voices Panel. The panel is made up of 18 residents from across the borough. Each received a selection of applications to score based on various criteria. These scores were added together and then the top applications were discussed in a full panel meeting to whittle it down to the final six. There was passionate discussion and debate but a final six were chosen.
These projects are now live across the borough! All our project partners met at the end of 2023 to share their learnings so far – there was clearly so much experience in the room and deep knowledge of Newham. I hope that these projects are some positive seeds that will continue to grow.
Guiding this commission process has so far been a brilliant learning experience for me personally. Learning to work with each project has come with its own unique set of needs and has really highlighted the community-building aspect of my role which often involves a lot of admin and event planning. I very much hope to take forward what I’ve learnt into the commissioning processes we have planned for 2024, with the goal of making things more accessible.