past projects
NG200 - Art Road Trip
2024. Part of the National Gallery's NG200 bicentenary programme.
In 2024 the National Gallery marked 200 years of bringing people and paintings together with NG200, a nationwide festival of art, creativity and imagination. Create Gloucestershire was chosen as one of only 18 partners across the UK to bring the National Gallery's travelling Art Road Trip to communities with the least access to culture.
The Art Road Trip arrived in Gloucestershire in July 2024: a travelling studio stocked with easels, materials and 40 well-known pictures from the collection printed onto fabric, from Holbein's The Ambassadors to Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Cypresses, with National Gallery educators on board. Working with four local arts and community organisations rooted in their neighbourhoods, we co-created a programme of visual arts experiences in schools, community venues and an empty shop turned gallery. Just under 3,000 children and young people took part, and for 76% of them it was their first encounter with the National Gallery, the second-highest figure of all 18 partners.
Project at a glance
Our job was to hold the partnership together. We convened the weekly meetings that brought the local partners and the National Gallery's creative team around one table, so every event responded to the ambitions and assets of its own neighbourhood. We built the governance and ways of working that let a national organisation and small neighbourhood groups collaborate as equals. Its legacy continues in new investment, stronger local networks, and plans to turn empty shops into gallery spaces curated by artists and residents.
Find out more
Read the full NG200 Legacy story