What Next? is a national movement set up to bring together arts and cultural organisations and people involved in arts and culture from across the UK, to articulate, champion and strengthen the role of culture in our society, to build alliances outside of the cultural sector, build relationships with local and national government and engage the public in new and different conversations about the arts. The movement grew out of a regular conversation at the Young Vic theatre in 2012, and the thirty plus local chapters – which are all purely volunteer run – have over time found their own approaches to adapt the What Next? model to meet their own local needs whilst staying in tune with the core underpinning values.
In February 2016, Marie Nixon decided that it was the perfect time for Sunderland to have its own chapter of What Next? and asked Ross Millard and myself to be co-chairs. We met to plan our first meeting, and agreed our principles: an open, collaborative, non-hierarchical approach under Chatham House rules, where everyone interested in culture in Sunderland could get together and discuss, champion and strengthen culture in our city.
We put the word out about our first meeting in March, PopRecs kindly offered to host us, and we all hoped that we might get between ten and twenty-five people turning up – maybe thirty if we were lucky.
Nearly seventy people turned out. But even better than that was the way that round-the-room introductions revealed they were from so many backgrounds. There were people from arts and culture organisations, photographers, musicians, sculptors, writers, playwrights, film-makers, fine artists, permaculturists, people from heritage organisations, owners of venues and facilities, community groups, students and more – and importantly, people who just loved to watch, participate in and support culture in their city.
The passion and enthusiasm for the opportunity to meet others, to share ideas, and to discuss what was happening in and beyond the city was evident, inspiring and humbling. There was strong support within the meetings for the bid for City of Culture 2021, and enthusiasm for the way that bid could recognise and support the creativity and endeavour already happening within the city, and support and foster it to grow and achieve even more.
Our first speaker was Lizzie Crump, Strategic Lead in the national What Next? organisation, who talked to us about the movement and how local chapters could operate, and the chair of the well-established What Next? Newcastle Gateshead group shared much in the way of helpful experience and thoughts on how we might find ways of working. In our second meeting, Doug Morris, Managing Editor of BBC Radio Newcastle shared his experience and provoked a discussion about the media, and in our third meeting, just last week, Mark Robinson, former Chief Executive of Arts Council (North-East), and arts and culture consultant at Thinking Practice discussed his view of the recent Culture White Paper and how a group like ours could find a way in to the national conversation on culture. We have a range of contributors and themes in mind for future meetings, but will be steered by our members and what is topical or timely.
Something became clear from the first two meetings: a lot of people stayed behind after the meeting was finished, talking to people that they’d met, sharing information and talking about projects and setting up potential collaborations. As a result, for the third meeting we opened for an additional hour: the What Next? business and discussion takes place for the first hour, and then the second is just informal open space to allow everyone the opportunity to mix and build links and take part in a creative conversation.
Within the space of just a few meetings, exciting ideas and plans are bubbling up from the members, in the spirit of the collaborative and non-hierarchical nature of What Next?. A series of free workshops is being run by a regular member to develop skills for artists and organisations in making better use of social media to promote their work, and very early plans are being hatched to develop a directory of artists and practitioners in the city. This can be for our cultural community to use – so someone considering making an application for Arts Council funding, for example, can find someone else who has done so successfully and has said they are willing to share their experience or help mentor. But it would also promote our creative talent to the outside world – people and organisations could search, for example, for someone with experience of running theatre workshops for young people, or who could lead a community discussion on fine art, or work on a collaborative project, or be commissioned to produce artwork.
If you’re reading this, and are interested in what we are doing and wondering how you can be a member, then the answer is easy: all you have to do is just come along to one of our meetings. Listen to the discussion. Share your thoughts and experience. Be part of the cultural conversation in the City of Sunderland, and join us to see how we can all take it forward.
Iain Rowan, Founder of Holmeside Writers
11th May 2016
