Flourish

Ongoing

A FREE mentoring course for artists who live or work in Darlington.

Image Credit. Laurelle Kamara

Contexts:

Online / Artist Development / Equality and Diversity

Partners:

Creative Darlington and Darlington Borough Council

People:

Cheryl Gavin

Tags:

Are you an artist / creative organisation who wants to realise your ideas and turn them into action?

Helix Arts wants to support and develop artists and creative organisations working in participatory arts.

Flourish is a development programme for creatives delivering arts projects with Darlington communities.

Helix Arts are working in partnership with Creative Darlington, Darlington Borough Council to offer six artists mentoring and support between Summer 2023 and Summer 2025.

Meet the Mentor

Do you want to find out more about Flourish? Have any questions you want to ask before applying?

Join us Thursday 8 June at 12 noon to find out more about the opportunity and chat with our Director Cheryl Gavin.

The event will take place on zoom and you can register using the button below.

Who is this for?

Artists/producers/individuals organisations either based in Darlington or interested in working in Darlington
Those who want to work creatively with communities between 2023 and 2025.
Creative Darlington and Helix Arts would particularly welcome proposals from people or organisations they haven’t supported previously to deliver community projects in Darlington and who have limited or no experience of securing art funding

What will you get?

Up to 3 x 90 minute mentoring sessions with Helix Arts
One action learning set and one group reflection session
£500 fee to cover your time to participate in mentoring
Ongoing consultancy, support, guidance from Helix Arts and their networks to support fundraising
Match funding from Darlington Borough Council towards your project subject to agreement and conditional to additional funding from another source being secured
Access to Helix Arts e-resources/tools supporting effective arts production

EOI Criteria & conditions of funding

Artists/producers/individuals organisations either based in Darlington or interested in working in Darlington
Those who want to work creatively with communities in Darlington in 2023/2024 and/or 2024/2025
Commitment for up to 3 mentoring session
Draft and submission of funding bids NO LATER than 3 months following end of mentoring.
Complete monitoring and evaluation for the programme

Undertake dedicated mentoring around socially engaged practice development and ideas relating to co-produced community based project
Artists must reach an agreement with Darlington Borough Council for support for their project proposal where required
Artists must work with Helix Arts to develop and submit funding application(s) to parties other than Darlington Borough Council to support the implementation of their project
Project would complete no later than March 2025.

Key Dates

Action	Key dates
Call out opens	Monday 22 May 2023 onwards
Meet the Mentor events	Thursday 8 June, 9am-9.45am
Expressions of interest closes	9 am Monday 19 June 2023
Mentees confirmed	W/c 26 June 2023
Mentoring plans agreed	July 2023
Mentoring and support	July – onwards 2025
Bid submissions	From November 2023
Resource/signposting	Throughout
Feedback/monitoring	December 2023/January 2024
Bid outcomes	End of March 2024
Projects Commence/complete	April 2024 – March 2025

Apply Here

Downloads

Flourish- Full call out

( pdf 6.21 MB)

Flourish Mentored Projects

Opening the Closet Door

‘Opening the Closet Doors’ is an art and film project that was created and developed by artist Sarah Li.

Working with local LGBTQ+ adults the project referenced the archives of the Darlington Hippodrome they explored these amazing archives with the incredible and very knowledgeable historian James Davison to uncover LGBTQ+ histories, stories, shows and performers.

Narratives and inspirations from the project were developed into creative responses that were exhibited at the Darlington Hippodrome in August 2022 and are available to view in an online exhibition.

Move Up

Delivered by TeesDance, in partnership with Darlington Hippodrome, MoveUP was 6 month
programme in 2022 for young dancers to learn how to become a choreographer and make their own
dance piece for stage.

This unique opportunity gave young people aged 14 to 19, or up to 25 with disabilities, the
chance to develop their creative, choreographic skills and showcase their creation on
Darlington Hippodrome’s main stage.

Contact us

Contact: info@helixarts.com | 0191 241 4931

Reference: Flourish