GRAFT run activities supporting early-career artists and engaging the community with visual arts. This supports the precarious freelance creative economy, as well as providing activities that improve wellbeing, connectedness and civic pride in the local area. The organisation is based in Lancaster and works across the Lancaster and Morecambe area, often with targeted groups, such as young people. In the 2024-25 financial year GRAFT have been dormant, but in previous years have run activities including: 1) The Artist’s Survival Guide (February - March 2022). The Artist’s Survival Guide was a series of 3 talks and workshops for anyone interested in following a career as an artist. The programme shared practical skills and strategies to help graduates navigate and thrive in the art world, led by a selection of early-career artists about their work and experiences. Workshop topics were devised through collaboration with students from Blackpool College of Art and Lancaster University, and members of the Good Things Collective, Morecambe. The Artist’s Survival Guide invited 8 artists and arts professionals to deliver 3 sessions covering areas and issues suggested by students and artists. 2) Community-created tile mural (July - August 2022). GRAFT worked with Glasgow-based artist Beth Shapeero to produce a new outdoor tile mural which was designed and made collaboratively with a community group connected to a Micro Garden in Morecambe’s West End. We hope this artwork will be able to contribute to other exciting creative projects in the area. In summer 2022, Beth ran a series of workshops for a group of residents to design and make a tiled mural which is now installed permanently at the Micro-Gardens. Participants represented both Morecambe residents and young people who accessed services at Stanley’s Youth Centre, fostering new relationships between different demographics connected to the garden. Beth supported the group through every part of the project, making sure that the final piece represents the local area and the group’s own ideas. 3) Exhibition platforming work by Black artists, October 2022-March 2023 Working with a group of young people from Lancaster, GRAFT ran a series of workshops exploring the Black history of the region, and relating it to racial inequalities in the art world. Guided by GRAFT, the young people decided on three early-career Black artists to invite to be commissioned to be part of an exhibition in Lancaster Maritime Museum. The exhibition took place in March 2023, with works shown for a month.

The primary stakeholders are the artists and audiences that GRAFT Lancaster CIC works with. GRAFT ensures that its activities are relevant and helpful for emerging artists, and that our programme reflects the current needs of this demographic. It is similarly important that GRAFT’s activities are interesting and engaging for local audiences, and as such, it is important to gain feedback from audiences in order to act upon this. The artists that we work with were consulted through direct and ongoing conversation both before, during and after delivering our events. These conversations are informal in nature, and occur via email, phone call and face-to-face interactions. These conversations are discussed between directors, and the results of this are recorded in the minutes from meetings. The practice of consulting artist stakeholders is ongoing in our programme. Artists call for: more exposure for their practice opportunities to make new work networking with other artists teaching and other professional experience In order to act upon our aims of increasing engagement with contemporary art in local communities, it is vital that the audiences that we encourage to participate in our events are consulted. As well as through informal conversation, we distribute feedback questionnaires to visitors and to workshop participants. These questionnaires are designed to invite feedback, ensuring that our activities are relevant to local communities. The results of these questionnaires are reviewed and compiled, and the results impact our future programming and development. As a result of this, we have: created more interactive activities for visitors to our exhibitions; provided workshops and talks for early-career artists; tailored events to specific audiences, e.g. families; given talks to, and run discussion groups with local non-art focused community groups.

No remuneration was received

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration