Creative Crawley launched their new space and Spring programme in County Mall Shopping Centre. People were invited to explore the space and there was a performance of Super Normal, Extra Natural by Requardt & Rosenberg in the shopping centre. Louise Blackwell, Creative Director, Creative Crawley, Adam Joolia, CEO AudioActive, Steve Sawyer, Chair of Trustees, Creative Crawley and Executive Director, Manor Royal BID and Mawadda Edbagi, Creative Assistant, Creative Crawley, gave speeches at the launch.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome everybody, my name's Steve Sawyer and in my day job I'm the Executive Director
00:24of the Manual Bid, but this afternoon I proudly stand before you in my capacity as Chair of
00:31Creative Crawley, a role I've had the privilege of doing since the very beginning of Creative
00:36Crawley some four years ago, and it's truly incredible what's been achieved in that relatively
00:44short time, and here we are today celebrating another milestone and another real breakthrough
00:53moment for culture in Crawley, and I'm glad that you can be here to join us for that today and to
01:01celebrate this momentous occasion. Can I especially thank Peter Lamb, MP for Crawley, for his support,
01:09councillors, Councillor Michael Jones, Leader of the Council and Officers of the Council are here
01:16today from Crawley Borough Council, thank you for your support, our friends from Arts Council
01:21England and the Sussex Community Foundation, thank you, and thank you representatives from Pop-Up
01:29Culture Crawley as a Towns Fund funded project, courtesy of again Crawley Borough Council, thank you all
01:36and thank you all for your support. I have forgotten somebody, my sincere apologies, but thank you all
01:46and thank you everyone who's contributed to this amazing project. So just a few words from me, I
01:52should start by saying I don't really know why I'm here, but I'm very glad I am here, but I do sometimes
02:01reflect on how I came to be here and so I'd like to share that with you today. A few years ago I
02:08was invited to a tatty room in a scruffy building with a really diverse range of people from
02:17different organisations and I almost didn't go and I get invited to a lot of meetings like that and
02:25most I sadly have to turn down either for being too busy but also because there's only so many
02:33kind of wacky icebreakers one person can tolerate in their lifetime and I've seen quite a few and
02:39I've had my fill. But there was something different about that meeting because it wasn't long after
02:47that that I found myself chair of Creative Crawley and more than that, Manuel Bidd ended up fronting
02:57the Creative People and Places application to the Arts Council for the Creative Playground
03:02Project which has leveraged over 1 million pounds into this town which is very very ably
03:09administered and delivered by Creative Crawley for the benefit of everybody in this town. It was at
03:18that meeting though that I could see the opportunity, the opportunity for Crawley to carve
03:24out a reputation as a truly creative place with a vision to create a reputation as a creative
03:32town that could reach beyond its boundaries to develop audiences, to nurture artists, to engage
03:41communities, to enliven and enrich places and repurpose otherwise redundant, underused or
03:51uninteresting places to bring them to life, to entertain, to inspire and to demonstrate the art
04:00of the possible. And that's what Creative Crawley has been doing over these past few years under
04:07the guidance of Louise and a fantastic team in the Creative Crawley team and a number of them
04:12are here today. And never before has it been so important, never have our high streets, our towns
04:20and our cities needed this kind of thing more. So often arts and culture is seen as the cherry on
04:29top of the cake. The fun thing that you do are if you've done all the other serious stuff. But I
04:35would argue that arts and culture is a fundamental ingredient of the cake. Places we care about need
04:43to be reimagined, they need to be reinvented and they need to be revitalised and the arts can do
04:50that. But vision without action is just a lovely dream. But when vision is aligned to positive
04:59action, then you can realise something tangible, something that can make a real difference. And so
05:08here we are today. Creatively speaking, something is happening in Crawley. My hope is that we can
05:17build on this. But that is not guaranteed.
05:29The last time I was stood here, it's a very short amount of time, but the amount of work that's
05:36happened and the rate with which it's happened has just been something quite phenomenal. So I just
05:42wanted to say thanks and congratulations to Louise and the production team at Creative Crawley and
05:47Sophie and Sam for making this happen. I think that I just wanted to say a few words about the
05:53symbolism of what this space means in the journey and our particular journey. It's a bit of a
06:03momentous stage because, like I say, the rate at which it happened, it might seem like it's popped
06:06up out of the blue, but let me tell you that this is kind of like the end point of a few years of
06:13hard graft and getting ducks in a row and then all of a sudden whoosh, just a few weeks that it took
06:19to get put together. It's easy to be fooled that it just sort of popped up. It is a pop-up, but I just
06:27wanted to give a bit of background. But before I do, I just wanted to say a bit more about, especially
06:32for anyone that doesn't know about Audio Active. We are the main partner here in the delivery space
06:38and we're a music organisation. We've been going for about 25 years in one form or another and
06:46we've been delivering work right across Sussex during that time. We've got a three-storey
06:52creative hub in Worthing, which is in an ex-Dorothy Perkins store on the High Street there.
06:58We work from an innovation hub in Brighton where young people can access industry standard
07:02equipment and facilities and support to nurture their talents. We have several projects which we
07:10use music to help young people and communities to solve very difficult problems in their lives.
07:16We create real social change. I think we're probably best known for the grassroots talent
07:20development work that we do, which is mostly the weekly free drop-in workshops where young
07:26people can come at any point in their creative journey at whatever level they are and get support
07:32to kind of reach whatever it is they're aiming for. We produce a lot of events and gigs at
07:40different levels to provide a platform for the young people and the young adults and
07:44emerging artists that we work with. Last but not least, we run a range of professional artist
07:50development programmes and career development programmes, which include a radical new label
08:01called NXTR, which we launched towards the end of last year. That is a platform for the most
08:06talented emerging artists that we work with, quite often for years prior to that, to launch their
08:12commercial careers and sort of develop their audience on a more sort of national and global
08:16scale. I'm not telling you this as a shameless plug for what we do. What I'm trying to do is to
08:22paint a picture of how we try to be an end-to-end pipeline for young people, not only who want to
08:29be creatives or work towards careers in the creative industries, but who just want to sort of
08:34have fun and plug into their creativity to build social connections, to build their skills
08:40for personal development. I just wanted to kind of just give an idea of the full sort of
08:47scale pipeline that we're aiming to develop here in Crawley. We've been working here in Crawley
08:53for about seven years. Our own journey here started when we were invited by Crawley Community
09:00Youth Service to come and complement their already established youth music programmes that are running
09:06from Dormans Youth Arts Centre and from Crawley Borough Council and colleagues there who invited
09:12us to see if we could work with them on some mentoring work with young people to divert them
09:17away from criminality and try and challenge serious youth violence. We quite quickly realised
09:26that we needed to develop more space in the town and in lieu of being able to sort of get hold of
09:30a shopfront or a space to sort of build a bit more space, we parachuted a lorry container into the
09:38car park of Crawley College with help from Vic Ealingworth, which was an immediate success,
09:44but the demand quite quickly outstripped what was possible to deliver there in the space.
09:49So we started looking for a slightly bigger space and still struggled to find it,
09:55at which point Crawley Film Initiative opened their arms and said come and work alongside us
10:00from Crawley Museum and we've still been working there for the last two, three years or so, maybe
10:05more, from that space there, albeit a bit constrained by the size of the space and the
10:11facilities there and the ability to be able to deliver the full complement of what we do.
10:17So the pipeline that I talk about, it can only really deliver its full potential when it's
10:21complemented by the right facilities and importantly an accessible and vibrant music
10:27scene where young people can start to identify as artists and continue that journey independently
10:32of audio-active, and also like contributing towards the placemaking of the town as those
10:39scenes kind of grow and get a name for themselves beyond the boundaries of the town. But for the
10:45last few years, like I said, we've been really hoping to cement our long-term commitment
10:49to the town by developing a permanent space. I'm not going to lie, it's been quite a challenging
10:54journey. It's not easy to acquire and develop a space without going into the details of why,
11:01but one of the things I'm so excited by with this project is that it's a really important
11:07rung on the ladder to that journey and what I really hope for this space is that we just
11:13prove the hell out of the concept and the town at the end of it all goes, this cannot stop.
11:19So what I would really like and encourage you all to do is get involved where you can,
11:25feedback where you can, help us to really paint that picture and tell the story because this
11:30is there's going to be a lot happening in the next three months, but it is a pop-up and as
11:36Steve says we really would like to start building towards some more permanent infrastructure in the
11:41town.
11:59My name is Louise Blackwell and I'm the Creative Director of Creative Crawley.
12:04Get comfy, I've got a few things to say. So I'd like to welcome you all, it is amazing to have
12:12people in this space. About four years ago this project began. Sam Evans and I in 2021 were
12:23standing in the cold on the high street in Crawley trying to encourage people to enter a former
12:31restaurant where a Bollywood dance workshop was taking place with Sartre Raja who's just over
12:36there and now I'm standing on a podium in a space in the town in front of 100 people who care about
12:42arts and culture. Since 2021 Creative Crawley has actually raised just under two million pounds
12:50for arts and culture here. We've worked in partnership with residents, with businesses,
12:56with artists and arts organisations, with schools, colleges, community groups, funders and councillors
13:02to try and show the positive impact that arts and culture can make on a town and its residents.
13:09We've worked in many of the 14 neighbourhoods, supported local and national artists and to date
13:15have employed more than 55 people who live in Crawley, West Sussex or Surrey and hundreds more
13:21who don't. We've created murals, festivals, alternative guidebooks to the town and raised
13:27the profile of Crawley as a creative place. Now some of you might have seen that there is a new
13:32mural going up on the entrance to Manor Royal and thank you so much to Jack who I think is around
13:37here somewhere for that. We'll be doing another one of these things at some point to welcome that
13:42mural into the town. But now we're showing what's possible when investment is made in the creative
13:49infrastructure. Things like this have happened before. We're just building on past work. So Rachel
13:55from Ginger Moo is here. A while back she set up a gallery in a unit downstairs. The Pop-Up Culture
14:02Crawley programme has been happening for the last two years and has been popping up in places around
14:06the town centre and the show you're about to see is actually the final event in that two-year pop-up
14:13programme. I'm so happy that I can hear loads of people playing in the background. We've been
14:19looking for a building of this kind for about four years. This is the only one we could find in the
14:26town centre and I'd really like to thank Simon Cuckow and Emma Mazin and everyone at County Mall
14:32for letting us do this. I want to thank Audio Active for partnering with us to make it possible.
14:39In West Green, another neighbourhood just outside the town centre,
14:43we're opening a creative maker space with theatre centre. That opens next week.
14:50With the invaluable investment from our principal funder, Arts Council England,
14:54and with support from the Shared Prosperity Fund via central government and Crawley Borough Council
14:59for the West Green space, plus some of the Pop-Up Culture Crawley programme money, we are able to
15:04test these two new cultural spaces in the town. Only until July 2025 though, I'll tell you why a
15:12bit later. We've also been working with a cohort of 10 Crawley people aged 16 to 29 as part of a
15:19skills exchange programme, thanks to additional support from Sussex Community Foundation and
15:25also Gatwick Airport. I'd also want to give a big shout out to Crawley College who have,
15:30from the beginning of Creative Crawley, let us be based there. It is absolutely crucial.
15:36Thank you so much to all of our funders. What you see on the screen here are images from both
15:43the spaces. We're really grateful to be working with Audio Active and Theatre Centre on the space
15:48in West Green. Both of those companies are regularly funded by Arts Council England.
15:53They are brilliant, flexible, clever and friendly partners who bring expertise,
15:59money and programming ideas to the table. Working together is the only way this endeavour is
16:04possible. This space here is public facing. Not today, but normally there's a 50 seat flexible
16:11theatre at the back of this space. You'll see it on the images. There are meeting rooms, there's a
16:17gallery and there's also a greenhouse, so you must come back and see the greenhouse.
16:22And all of this is available to hire. It's for you. It's for the people of Crawley and it'll
16:27look different every time you visit. So use it now because by the end of June it will be gone.
16:34The West Green space is for creative professionals to make their work in.
16:38There are five resident artists based there, three of whom live in Crawley. There's an architect,
16:44fashion designers, producers and theatre makers. The studio spaces are available to hire. I hope
16:49you get that message coming through loud and clear and it opens next week. There's open days
16:55for the public, so do come and visit. People are really excited about what we're doing.
17:02I'm already being asked why we are only opening this space until the end of June.
17:06It's simple. We are project funded. We are committed to offering affordable creativity.
17:13The project comes to an end in July. Creative Crawley, as we stand today,
17:19only has confirmed funding through until March 2026 and we're committed to paying people for
17:24their time. For us this is not a hobby, it's a job. We are part of the creative industries.
17:31We are of course working hard, as we have done for the last four years, to continue.
17:36The costs of keeping this space going per month are £13,000. That's £4,000 on
17:43rent, energy, rates, running costs and £9,000 on staffing. That's only to open the doors from
17:49Thursday to Sunday. £13,000 a month is £155,000 a year and that's just to open the doors.
17:58To fill it with amazing and inspiring artworks and market them to make sure people come
18:04is a whole lot more. That's why we're only open until the end of June.
18:09We'll make a how-to guide so others can take it on after us and build on what we have done.
18:16We are privileged to be working with incredible local and national professional creatives in this
18:21space. We have commissioned the wonderful Pease Pottage based artist Abdullah Nafisi,
18:26who I'm not sure if he's here, he was planning to come but I haven't seen him yet,
18:30to create The Surgeon. And brilliantly, Abdullah's work has just been chosen for the
18:35Frieze Arts Fair this year. We have worked with Eric McLennan, who is around somewhere,
18:41and 102 local people to bring you Making the Invisible Visible. Make sure you see it before
18:47you go. And Lucy and Bill from Leave Then Look, their wonderful playable exhibition,
18:51has come to this town as part of a tour that has included the Towner in Eastbourne
18:55and the Baltic in Gateshead. They are really high profile arts venues.
19:01And finally, we are so pleased to continue our relationship with Rekhart and Rosenberg
19:05and The Place London with Supernormal Extranatural, and I can't wait for you to see it.
19:11There's so much more. Next Thursday you can come and meet Abdullah and Lucy and Bill at
19:16Woodsy and Friends. Do come back and pick up a brochure. I would like to thank the incredible,
19:23creative, crawly staff, the volunteer trustees and consortium members who have made this happen.
19:30You can see their names, as somebody pointed out, quite small over there on the board,
19:36but read it. And as Adam said, Ian Ross has been crucial in making this happen,
19:41and I miss him, and I know that he is here in spirit.
19:46I would like to mention two other people in particular.
19:50Stuart Hayes, who designed and led the team that built these spaces,
19:54and Sam Evans, Head of Learning and Production at Creative Crawley,
19:59who has been on this journey with me since the beginning, and without whom I could not do it.
20:05They are magicians. They are the hardest working people I know, and my dad works really hard.
20:12They care, and so everyone they work with cares too. Thank you both from the bottom of my heart.
20:28Hello. For those who don't know me, I'm Mawada, and I'm the Creative Assistant here at Creative
20:43Crawley. I started here via the Arts Work Breakthrough Programme, which is a six-month
20:50paid work placement that allows young people entry routes into the creative industry.
20:55My placement ended last week, but I'm so glad to say that Creative Crawley has kept me on,
21:00and I'm looking forward to continuing working here as our spring season is absolutely packed.
21:05Speaking of our spring season, today we have our first showing of Supernormal Extra Natural,
21:10which is simply amazing. You can collect some headphones from Hannah and myself,
21:15and make your way out. It goes around the balcony or the ground floor,
21:19where there'll be a welcome team to guide you. The show starts at five,
21:22but you'd like to collect your headphones now for a smooth start.
21:26Thanks a lot. Enjoy the show, and enjoy the rest of the evening.