Dudley Creates Spring Gathering

You are warmly invited to a gathering of people who have all kinds of different roles in relation to creativity and culture in Dudley borough.

Wednesday 17 April, 6pm-8pm
CoLab Dudley, 201a Dudley High Street, DY1 1QQ

Reserve a spot now

Dudley’s Cultural Collaborators network convenes four times a year at Seasonal Gatherings focused on connection, shared learning and collaborative action. The gatherings are hosted by a collective of local creatives, and are open to all.

We’ve hosted a number of informal, drop-in gatherings to date. We’re changing things up in 2024. We’d love you to join us for facilitated explorations of Dudley Creates cultural strategy in action. This means time with people discussing topics and ideas we’ll introduce. This spring we’ll be drawing attention to our cultural ecosystem.

Facilitated discussion

How might we nurture a flourishing cultural ecosystem in Dudley?

Last year we launched Dudley Creates: a 100 year cultural strategy in action for Dudley borough. 30 locally-based artists and creatives brought the strategy to life in it’s first year.

We will explore the many and varied kinds of value generated through different ways of creating with over 430 local people through 66 workshops/activities in 38 different spaces and places across Dudley borough.

We’ll assess whether as a result our local cultural ecosystem might be flourishing any more, using locally developed vital signs to understand ecosystem flourishing. This will help us to consider new possibilities and opportunities for collaboration and sharing / attracting resources.

Reserve a spot now

Exhibitions

As always, our space on Dudley High Street will be full of inspiration and creative invitations. There will be two exhibitions that you can visit while you’re at the Spring Gathering.

Potential for urban agriculture in Dudley

CoLab Dudley is collaborating with architecture and design students from Birmingham City University who are exploring regeneraive design and the potential for urban agriculture in Dudley town centre. They have been developing gifts, and designs with strategies and possible sites for growing in the town.

Stories of Place: Time Portal

In the CoLab Dudley space we have a physical manifestation of a developing digital archive. Over the last 3 years local people have gathered data, artefacts and imaginaries of the past, present and future of Dudley High Street. Visit the Time Portal to see unusual observations the High Street, imaginings of the future High Street, and artefacts shared and created by local people.

Over the next 3 years we’ll be collaborating with community technologists and local people to co-design a digital living archive of creative artefacts, experiments and imaginaries from the past, present and future of Dudley borough. The archive will lift and celebrate stories from local action as a learning and sharing tool to inspire and inform future experiments. If you’re interested in being part of this as an archivist, researcher, coder, imagineer or in any other role please do get in touch: colabdudley@gmail.com

Dudley’s Cultural Collaborators are funded by Arts Council England as part of the Cultural Compact initiative. Dudley Creates activities are supported by Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant Funding, National Lottery Community Fund (Reaching Communities and Climate Action Fund). Additional investment and support is provided by Dudley CVS, CoLab Dudley and Creative Black Country.