Cultural Collaborators Network launch

A warming winter welcome awaits people from community groups and networks, and local not-for-profits who would like to meet local artists, makers and creatives.

Through CoLab Dudley, with the Creative Black Country team, we have been working with Dudley’s creative and artistic community, Dudley Council and the Arts Council. Together we’d like to help more people to take part in creative activities and shape culture in their communities.

We think that a great way to do this is to focus on relationships. Weaving together all kinds of people, ideas and skills. Connecting them with the places and spaces we love and care for. Making use of resources that we have around us and opportunities to bring in other kinds of resources. Nurturing these relationships can help us to shape culture and creative lives which are rooted in care for each other and the environment. Our network launch is an opportunity to pracice this; rehearsing the futures we want.

We already have some really BIG ideas, and lots of wonderful smaller ones that are being made more resilient by CoLab Dudley Time Rebels who are connecting them. Join us for informal making, chatting and connecting around these ideas and your ideas. You could:

• Create a collage, make a zine, write a poem, or add to a map for Time To Make… Spaces pop-ups.
•  Meet the crafty duo We Are Makers who have been popping up in unusual spaces; look out for their yarn bombed shopping trolley and make some colourful decorations with wool.
• Find out about emerging plans for spectacular site-specific performance work with local people in Brierley Hill.
• Contribute to the co-design of the home grown curriculum for Dudley People’s School of Climate Justice.
• Find out what we’ve learned from a Summer of Creativity, and 4 years of Dudley Creates and work with Time Rebels in Dudley.
• Identify vital signs for a thriving Cultural Collaborators Network.
• Contribute your insights and hopes to an emerging Cultural Manifesto that will guide Dudley’s 100 Year Cultural Strategy.

 RSVP to join us onThursday 8 December between 12pm and 3pm in our wintery Imaginarium at CoLab Dudley, on Dudley High Street (opposite Nationwide). We’ll have the coffee machine on, a plentiful supply of hot chocolate, tasty teas and cold drinks, along with some light savoury and sweet seasonal refreshments.