What makes a Creative Piggy Bank work?
Download our guide to Creative Piggy Banks - a funding model that puts financial power in the hands of communities.
Create Gloucestershire Annual Report 2025-26
Read about a year of growing creative collective action across Gloucestershire, from neighbourhood alliances and community-owned funds to new ways of leading together.
“Who knew so much goodness was right here all along?”
What over 55 people told us about growing creativity in Gloucestershire. On 16 September, we convened more than 55 people for a day together at the Friendship Café in Gloucester around one question: how can we grow creativity in our communities better, together?
What makes Creative Catalysts distinctive?
Download our guide to Creative Catalysts - a role that supports communities to grow creative power.
The space between something and nothing: learning from Create Local
The space between something and nothing: learning from Create Local
One question we get asked a lot is: “What do you actually do in a neighbourhood?” The honest answer is: often, we wait.
It's not the kind of thing you'd expect the Chair of Arts Council England, and former Director of the Tate, to leave with. But it's exactly the kind of detail that keeps drawing him back to Matson.
Future Talent: Creative Health practice in Gloucestershire
In 2022 and 2023, Create Glos teamed up with the NHS to run a series of micro experiments designed to test and build the infrastructure needed to support neighbourhood-led arts and health. Read about the process and findings.
Celebrating Creativity: The Legacy of the National Gallery’s NG200 Art Road Trip in Gloucestershire
In 2024, the National Gallery marked a historic milestone—200 years of bringing people and paintings together—with a year-long celebration known as NG200. This ambitious initiative looked both to the past and the future, launching a nationwide festival of art, creativity, and imagination to set the tone for the Gallery’s third century.
Top tips for inclusive evaluation
Barnwood's Research and Policy team shared their learning and a range of resources related to inclusive and accessible evaluation practices through one of the dataday workshops.
Find downloadable resources here.
Voice of Nature
Jacqui Stearn’s workshop, on creative writing inspired by Data, produced a powerful collective sonnet, responding to the Biodiversity Stripes data visualisation.
Open Space Sessions
In the open space: we explored engaging young people in shaping data collection, co-analysis to understand data gaps, the importance of getting data sharing collaborations right, and the promise and pitfalls of presenting data through stories.
Keynote listening
Our keynote listener, Malaki Patterson, offered us a powerful set of reflections on the day.
Ripple Effects Mapping
What difference is your work really making? Ripple Effects Mapping helps you capture the wider impact of projects, organisations and your own practice, and trace how change spreads beyond the obvious outcomes. Watch our short film, download our guide to get started, and read Sophia’s tips for mapping on your own.
What we learnt from our creative conversation about HOW we work together support health and wellbeing,
In June 2023 Healthy Communities Together (HCT) Gloucestershire held a Structures of Togetherness Event in Stroud Sub Rooms, a creative conversation about whether HOW we work together in the county to support health and wellbeing, matters as much as WHAT we do (hint: HCT thinks it does).
Image credit- Myron Rogers
Providing Creative Health in Gloucestershire during Lockdown
Gloucestershire Creative Health Consortium’s pandemic paper ‘Providing Creative Health in Gloucestershire during Lockdown’ is available to download here.
Striving for more Inclusive Recruitment
Create Gloucestershire is continually looking at ways we can be a more inclusive employer. And over the past couple of years we have made lots of significant changes to our recruitment process to make it as flexible and accessible as possible.
We’ve put this blog together to share our learning about what we did. And at the bottom of the page you’ll find a checklist that we hope you’ll find useful.
The Art of Libraries toolkit is here!
We are delighted to announce that our Art of Libraries toolkit is now available to download.
The toolkit is packed with creative and practical ideas to support artists and library staff to work together to make an irresistible creative programme for children and young people.
Reimagining where we live: cultural placemaking and the levelling up agenda
Create Gloucestershire’s evidence to the DCMS inquiry into cultural placemaking and levelling up. We share what we’ve learned from resident led alliances such as Culture Matson and Cam and Dursley Creatives, from paying artists and community producers properly, and from bringing new funders to the table, and set out why trust, time and shared decision making matter most in places without an established arts infrastructure.
Going the Extra Mile: a project to help those furthest from work
Public Health England have recently published a report called Health matters: health and work
The summary states that being in good work is better for your health than being out of work. You can read the full report here.
We wanted to draw your attention to one of the case studies in the report which focuses on GEM - a Gloucestershire partnership of community organisations who aim to engage and support individuals who are facing multiple barriers to employment.