Today, 12^th January, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch), in partnership with King’s College London, announce the shortlist for their new award that celebrates the civic role of arts organisations in society. The ten organisations on the shortlist chosen from 260 applications are:

• Deveron Projects (Aberdeenshire) lockdown led to a rethink of their local-global Artist in Residence policy, leading to a local honesty shop with Baker in Residence. This became a focal point to meet, and an online global Slow Marathon grew a community of walkers worldwide to share their lockdown walks to circumnavigate the world, resulting in a collage of 1,500 photos of the sky.
• Eden Court Highlands (Inverness) formed a partnership with the Highland Council and re-purposed their staff team and facilities as the humanitarian aid centre for the region. Their work with the community included activities for children of keyworkers, packing and distributing thousands of food parcels each week, and turning the venue’s restaurant windows into a temporary community exhibition site to display a collection of Black Lives Matter banners.
• EGO Performance Company Ltd (Coventry) remotely filmed and streamed a weekly soap by their members, ‘Corona-nation Street’, building creative skills and reflecting the everyday experiences and talents of a diverse, young and largely marginalised community.
• Friction Arts (Birmingham) responded to the pandemic in a range of ways from supporting freelance artists, setting up a ‘directory of creative enquiries’ at two food banks, allowing their outdoor spaces to be used for local community groups to meet once permitted, to create new online expansions and editions of their youth programmes. They researched and piloted the use of parks as community meeting and creative spaces.
• Heart n Soul (London) consulted a steering group of their members to co-create an online programme of activities for those with learning disabilities, including club nights, quizzes, baking sessions and an online gallery of artwork resulting from creative packs which were posted out every fortnight, and provided regular work for freelance artists.
• Key Changes (London) developed Studio Connect, allowing specialist music mentors and artists with mental health challenges to be connected remotely; this was accompanied by online and socially distanced choirs and workshops for participant artists living in high risk settings and an independent record label for artists with lived experience of mental health challenges.
• Museum of Homelessness (London) consulted with health specialists, with partners Streets Kitchen, The Outside Project, The Simon Community and the Union Chapel, co-created a community-led Covid-19 homeless taskforce and published a plan to help the homeless community – to block book empty hotel rooms for the community to self-isolate, which was adopted as national strategy to bring 29,000 people into safe accommodation. The taskforce formed a group of 50 volunteers partnering with the council and many local organisations, to produce and distribute meals and connect with those in isolation.
• Quiet Down There CIC (Brighton) prioritised those most affected by the pandemic, providing community meals and one to one meetings in outdoor locations for those in vulnerable situations. They showed leadership in their community, highlighting the overlooked stories of laundrette staff who continued working but had not been acknowledged as key workers, forming creative community hubs involving six artists and 30 launderettes.
• The Big House Theatre Company (London) stepped in on behalf of their members, who are care-experienced young people, to liaise with support services which were difficult to access due to the pandemic. They also provided resources and support by way of counselling, financial advice, as well as new online theatre courses and workshops. This resulted in The Ballad of Corona V, co-written to address the harsh reality of what has happened to some of the city’s most marginalised young people.
• The Whitworth (Manchester) rewrote their mission to respond to the extreme social inequities exposed by the pandemic, adhering to three key principles: learning through making and doing; creating a place of care, consideration, and community; and taking action. The Whitworth’s expanded online programme engaged almost 300,000 people throughout the pandemic.

The awards aim to highlight creative ways in which publicly funded bodies have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and reconfigured their missions and plans, despite the hardships they face themselves as institutions. The shortlisted organisations range from smaller organisations of less than ten staff, to larger ones with over 30 staff, from across the cultural spectrum and based across the UK.

The shortlist celebrates arts organisations which have boldly reimagined their missions to put their communities first. The shortlist is a testament to how arts organisations are helping to shape the future: culture, creativity and the arts are manifesting stories that enable us to realise what it means to be fully human, individually and collectively.

The organisations on the shortlist have been chosen to highlight and celebrate this pioneering work and their response to the pandemic; award winners will receive funding and further support to continue their work and share learning. The award aims to shine a spotlight on the vital role that arts organisations play in sustaining a thriving, creative, and connected society, particularly during challenging times.

From the shortlist of ten arts organisations, The Award for Civic Arts Organisations will offer one award of £100,000 and two of £25,000. The award is funded by the Foundation, with King’s College London as the academic partner to deliver the award, involving students from the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities. Baroness Bull (Deborah Bull), Vice President & Principal (London) and Senior Advisory Fellow for Culture at King’s College London is chairing the judging panel. The other panellists are: David Bryan, Fiona Doring, Henrietta Imoreh, Anisa Morridadi, Jo Verrent and André Wilkens.

This award builds on the growing movement of arts organisations reflecting on their relationship with society. The Foundation’s Rethinking Relationships report demonstrated the need for arts organisations to work more closely with their communities if they are to stay relevant in a rapidly changing world.

The winners will be chosen from the shortlist of ten organisations and will be announced in March.