In 100 days the National Gallery will begin a year long celebration to mark bringing people and paintings together for 200 years, called NG200. And Create Gloucestershire and partners are taking part in ‘The Art Road Trip’ bringing the celebrations to communities in Gloucestershire!

Last week Culture Matson had its second visit from Sir Nicolas Serota, Chairperson of Arts Council England. The group ‘got out the good biscuits’ before sitting down and talking through the amazing journey they have been on in the last 5 years.

This is the first in a 2 part series of blogs from a conversation where Pippa and Debbie look at the story of Culture Matson. In this blog they look back at how Culture Matson came about and how the group has developed.

In 2023 Culture Matson started a trial to develop a ‘Community Chest’. A community chest is a shared investment fund that supports health and wellbeing and joins up money from the NHS, local authorities, and other sources. Read how members of Culture Matson met the challenge of running a community chest to collectively decide how best to use the money for their neighbours.

Find out more about the Off we Go project and the impact joining in with the activities had on those taking part.

This is the question that sits behind our Create Health strand - a series of test projects to develop and understand how to live well.  Our experience in Gloucestershire and evidence drawn from practice across the UK and internationally, confirms that arts, creativity and culture are a fundamental part of living well.

CG’s take away from the new national and local funding picture is that there are many brilliant arts and cultural organisations who secured funding and just as many that didn’t. There was simply not enough funding available to meet the incredible aspirations and potential of arts and cultural organisations in England.

When Cam and Dursley Creatives and GL11 Community Hub collaborated on the Platinum Jubilee Flag making project the community went silkscreen crazy, producing over 2,500 flags depicting images created by local children that celebrated our Queen.

A new culture board has been set up for Cheltenham to develop a new cultural strategy for Cheltenham

• The board includes representatives from cultural and creative communities

• They want to include artists and residents views in the strategy

• They have developed an online survey so they can get some feedback and hear your views on how culture is supported in Cheltenham

• Residents and creative practitioners are warmly invited to complete this survey.