since 2011

Past Projects

Some of the key initiatives we have made happen since 2011, and what we learned along the way. Our work has grown and changed in response to local needs over the years:  we have gathered it under five strands.

Creative health Incubation Communities Careers Collaboration

Creative health and cultural commissioning

For fifteen years we have worked in the spaces where creativity meets health, convening and connecting the arts and the health sectors so they can build something better together..

A large green circle with a cut out like an open mouth, with dark green and pink sound arcs, and pink and green symbols.

2024–25

Healthy Communities Together

We joined with partners from across Health, Local Government and the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS)…

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who had a shared belief in the need for a different way to tackle fairer health. The Stewardship Group worked together for four years and discovered that, to solve complex problems like health inequality, we need a fundamentally different way of working together.

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2021–22

Off We Go

A Covid response programme of relaxed creative sessions across the Stroud district, welcoming people into art, photography and craft.

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For four in ten of the 358 people who came it was their first time doing anything creative, and many were referred through the NHS and their GP. A key innovation was GPs' use of text invitation to patients, inviting them to improve health and wellbeing through culture after being isolated through the pandemic. Off We Go continues in 2026, led by Prema Arts Centre with Creative Community, in partnership with Create Glos.

2020

Create Health Venues

Supporting venues New Brewery Arts, Hawkwood and Kingshill House to navigate through Covid, CG convened the three venues to provide mutual support, problem-solve and reconnect with creativity together.

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The collaboration energised creative response to the pandemic that reached vulnerable households with a home-delivered and digital arts offer, alongside arts on prescription work.

2019

Whole school social and emotional wellbeing

We worked with arts organisations Strike a Light, Art Shape,…

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RISE and Create Studios over two years in three primary and one secondary school in Gloucester to test a prevention-led approach to supporting children's social and emotional wellbeing through creativity.

2015–2020

Cultural Commissioning & Arts on Prescription

Cultural Commissioning Programme 2015–18 was one of only two national pilots of its kind, which we conceived with NHS Gloucestershire.

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Over three years it brought health commissioners and cultural organisations around one table and funded twelve arts and health projects across the county. The relationships with NHS and creative health organisations continued to develop 2018–20, with Arts on Prescription research strengthening the sector and building capacity for the whole county to work with arts & health practices. Everything we do in creative health today grew from these early steps.

Incubation and support

Some of our proudest work has been backing bold new ideas and cultural organisations into being, from festivals to touring, and helping them grow strong enough to stand on their own.

Two open hands, one dark blue and one blue, cupped towards each other beneath a blue star, an orange star and a dark blue plus sign.

2020–present

Incubation and support

We are part of the origin story of many wonderful creative projects and organisations across Gloucestershire.

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The artists and founders make it happen; our part is the quieter infrastructure that helps them establish themselves, stabilise and continue to thrive.

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2020

Covid artist commissions

We commissioned Gloucestershire artists to make new work during the first lockdown, finding creativity and connection at a time of crisis.

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Projects like Danielle Salloum's Sisterhood, celebrating the stories of local women, reached people online when venues had closed and commissioning opportunities for artists had dried up.

2018

Creative Trade Route

With Art Couture Painswick, we reimagined a much-loved festival as a route linking Stroud and Gloucester, built around wearable art.

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Schools, colleges, university students and artists worked together on design and making, drawing new and more diverse audiences and opening talent development routes for young people in some of the county's most deprived communities.

2013

Strike A Light and the Collaborative Touring Network

The festival we incubated to bring bold contemporary performance to Gloucester, and the touring network that grew alongside it to share work between towns.

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Strike A Light is now a powerhouse of contemporary theatre in the county, a much loved and valued independent organisation and one of our members.

Creative neighbourhoods and communities

Much of our work starts in one place, led by the people who live there. These projects  are rooted in Create Local and our Neighbourhood Creative Alliances.

2024

NG200: Art Road Trip

In 2024 we were chosen as one of eighteen National Gallery partners across the UK for NG200, its two hundredth anniversary.

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With four Gloucestershire arts and community organisations we brought the National Gallery's travelling Art Road Trip to neighbourhoods with the least access to culture. Just under 3,000 children and young people took part, and for more than three quarters it was their first encounter with the National Gallery.

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2021

Love Art

A programme exposing a group of young people to amazing artists working across the breadth of arts and culture in Gloucestershire.

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Inspiring speakers and workshops. This connected to Meeting Life as a Creative Adventure, and helped lay the foundations for Creative Community's ongoing work with young people including the 2026 Community Arts School.

2017–2021

Art of Libraries

We worked with libraries across the county, from the Forest of Dean to Tewkesbury, Dursley to Gloucester, to open them up as creative spaces at the heart of their communities…

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and build the 'producing muscle' and confidence of library teams to work with more artists in the delivery of Glos Libraries' ambitions. Glos Libraries has since become an NPO within the Arts Council England's strategic portfolio.

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2017

Gloucester Great Place

Gloucester City Council won £1.49 million to put culture at the heart of the city's future, with partners from across the city.

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We led the cultural commissioning strand, working with a wide range of arts and community partners to connect culture with the city's wider ambitions.

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2017

Hidden Voices, Hidden Stories

An intergenerational project in Matson, made with Strike A Light and the GL4 festival, in which young people gathered and performed the estate's hidden stories.

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It was a creative, joyful way to hear from people who are rarely asked, and to show Matson's strengths.

Talent, skills and creative careers

We believe that access to a creative life is everyone’s right. This programme of work  helps people of all ages find their way into the arts in a way that suits them and, for those that want it, to build a creative career. It grew into Create Talent and Create Leaders.

2023

Future Talent

Led by a steering group with roots in the sector going back to 2007, Future Talent researched who gets to work in creative health in Gloucestershire,

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and how to open that career up. Through creative labs, a survey, focus groups and a new peer network, it set out practical ways to build a more diverse and better supported workforce.

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2022

Create Your Future

Co-designed with two Gloucestershire secondary schools, Forest High in Cinderford and Barnwood Park in Gloucester, and arts partner Creative Community,

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Create Your Future opened up conversations about creative careers with young people who have less and less exposure to the arts at school. Local creative professionals ran hands-on workshops and Q&A sessions, brokering links to training, work experience and Arts Award.

2021

Meeting Life as a Creative Adventure

In partnership with nowhere, encouraging 18 to 24 year olds to harness their innate creativity, how to thrive in uncertainty and exploring an unfolding future together through the arts.

2020–21

Kickstart

Through the government's Kickstart scheme we worked with 24 arts and cultural organisations and businesses across the county to create paid work placements for young people,

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opening a first door into the creative sector.

2019

Arts Award

CG provides the county network home for Arts Award, supporting children and young people to grow as artists and arts leaders through the national scheme.

2016

Creative Employment Programme

We created apprenticeships and paid opportunities to help people start careers in the arts, as part of the national Creative Employment Programme.

2016

GEM (Going the Extra Mile)

A county-wide partnership helping people facing barriers to work move closer to training, volunteering or employment, with creativity as one of the ways in.

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Led by Gloucestershire Gateway Trust, it aimed to reach 1,100 people over three years, and we took part as one of the community partners.

2012

GLOSS Transition programme

When the county's arts education agency GLOSS closed in 2011, we stepped in to keep grassroots arts activity going, using the remaining funds to commission our members.

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We prioritised young people with additional needs, so their access to the arts would not be lost, and this shaped our priorities today.

Collaboration and systems change

Behind much of Gloucestershire's cultural life is quieter, infrastructure work: bringing organisations and people together to develop new ways of working, sharing what we learn, noticing gaps and building the foundations that enable others to thrive. This work underpins all our other strands. The projects below are the foundations of collaborative systems change  from our first five years.

Two overlapping hands, teal and dark teal, reaching in from opposite sides in front of a large yellow circle.

2014–16

Prove and Improve

We developed a shared way for arts organisations to evaluate their work and learn from it together, a collective framework that informed our thinking about the potential of pooled data.

2014

Digital strategy and Kitbag

We helped the county's cultural sector build its digital confidence, including a Kitbag of practical tools and guidance.

2013

Consortium approach to private fundraising

We tested a shared approach to private fundraising, so cultural organisations could seek support together rather than competing for it.

2013

Made in Gloucestershire

A first of its kind partnership in 2013 that brought the artist support offers of the Everyman, Parabola Arts Centre, The Roses and Theatre Gloucestershire under one banner…

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so Gloucestershire artists could more easily find space, mentoring and a place to show new work. We added professional training in leadership, helping practitioners run this kind of event for themselves.

2012

Manifesto and story of change

Our founding manifesto and story of change, setting out what we stand for and the difference we want to make.

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It was created with artists and organisations from across the county, and energised the first 15 years of our work.

2011

Arts Inc

An early piece of work bringing together arts organisations that specialise in inclusion, to find better ways to collaborate and to connect with the wider voluntary sector.

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Led by GDance, Art Shape and Fairgame Theatre Company, it created a shared way of working and an annual Arts Inc Lab.