Community Arts Programme Development - Charnwood, Leicestershire

The Charnwood Forest Landscape Partnership Scheme will celebrate Charnwood Forest's internationally important volcanic legacy. Eighteen projects will inspire people to explore its rich landscape, understand its diverse heritage, and develop skills to care for it. It will enable the partnership to coordinate management at landscape scale and finally secure the future of this extraordinary place. The projects will be delivered under three themes: 'Explore Charnwood', 'Understand Charnwood' and 'Care for Charnwood'. The community arts programme, entitled 'Celebrating Charnwood', is one of five projects within the 'Understand Charnwood' theme The purpose of the 'Celebrating Charnwood' community arts programme is to engage people through a variety of art forms and events to record and celebrate local heritage, stories and traditions and to encourage their active participation in the future of the Forest. We envisage that the successful tenderer will engage with a range of communities and groups in the project area (i.e. within the boundary of Charnwood Forest Regional Park), key target audiences in surrounding urban areas of Leicester, Loughborough and Coalville and the wider public both online and face-to-face. The programme will also include some activity with schools, online collaborations with other global sites with similar fossils, and participation in the National Forest Timber Festival. For this project, we are looking for an organisation that will adopt an embedded community arts approach to the development of the five-year programme of activities, one which will engage target audiences in a meaningful way and will build trust and commitment over time. The ambition goes beyond delivering artistic activities in a community setting. We are looking for a more radical approach, which carries risks but offers greater rewards. Art will be a means by which the partnership and target audiences can communicate about Charnwood Forest. Ultimately, the community arts programme should help different audiences to engage with decision-making about Charnwood Forest, its management, and its future. Further information and how to apply is set out in the attached documents.