It is a double celebration at Seven Stories as the National Centre for Children’s Books is awarded two grants from Arts Council England.
Strategic Touring Programme : £235,910
We will use a partnership approach to explore and share new concepts within children’s literature exhibitions and gallery interpretation methods presented by and for young people. Seven Stories will collaborate with partners across ten venues to implement an audience development plan that will reach new people, including participation engagement programmes to involve more children and young people and strengthening the audience base for future work.
The tour of 6 exhibitions to 10 venues will be delivered across the Midlands, North, and South East regions including the Dick Institute, Kilmarnock; Scarborough Art Gallery; Norwich Castle Museum; Tullie House, Carlisle; Chatham Historic Dockyard.
Fundraising Manager, Amanda Beckham said, “This will enable us to extend our touring exhibition programme over the next three years but also, alongside it, to share some of the learning and participation work we do. It is a sizeable award for us. It will help us to build our National profile and also fulfil the remit of trying to reach people who would not normally have the chance to benefit from our work."
The money will also help to ensure that Seven Stories Touring Exhibitions are robust enough to withstand the tough love of young visitors.
People across England will have improved access to great art visiting their local area. This includes:
- better access to high quality work for people in places in England which rely on touring for much of their arts provision
- more high quality work to reach people and places with the least engagement
- more high quality work on tour connecting more effectively with people across a wide range of venues
- stronger relationships forged between those involved in artistic, audience and programme development on both the supply and demand side of touring
- a wide range of high quality work on tour, including in particular more work by and for children and young people as well as more work by and for people from diverse backgrounds
Museum’s Resilience Fund: £93,050
This proposal will support a collaborative partnership between Seven Stories and Newcastle University with the aim of progressing joint collections, research, teaching & learning placements as well as work based skills development and public engagement programmes.
Sarah Maxfield, Area Director, North, Arts Council England, said: “Our Museums resilience fund supports museums by enabling them to become more sustainable and robust, whatever their size, and helping them to offer improved experiences for both audiences and artists. I’m delighted that 27 museums across the North have been awarded a total of £3.7 million in this round and look forward to seeing the results of this funding in the future. The Arts Council’s aim is to achieve great art and culture for everyone – the North has some fantastic museums across the area which between them reach thousands of visitors each year therefore greatly supporting us in our mission. ”
This grant will help Seven Stories to develop its longstanding relationship with Newcastle University. Following the success of the bid, Newcastle University will now invest a total of £75,000 in the scheme over three years, making Seven Stories' Collection more accessible to students and the general public.