Citadel Arts & Cultured
2020 Alcohol Awareness Commission brief and call out
Context
Citadel Arts Children & Families Agency and Cultured, St Helens Local Cultural Education Partnership and St Helens Young People’s Drug and Alcohol Team are jointly commissioning an alcohol awareness project to tackle the issue of teenage alcohol consumption in St Helens.
Citadel Arts: Previously operating The Citadel Arts Centre, Citadel Arts is a new, children and families’ agency in St Helens providing performance and participation opportunities exclusively in the public realm. Funded by Arts Council England & St Helens Council Citadel Arts makes people’s lives better in St Helens by offering three strands of activity:
- Children & Family Theatre Programme in non-traditional spaces in the Public Realm
- Creative Participation Programme in Community settings
- Co-commissioning for the public realm and community settings
Citadel Arts delivers a weekly Creative Participation programme – using creativity and the arts to help local people of all ages, abilities and walks of life by benefiting mental health and general wellbeing, giving people confidence, helping people to feel less isolated and giving people a sense of pride and purpose in what they can achieve. Through the arts we transform local lives in St Helens.
St Helens Youth Theatre provides 60 workshops per year, engaging up to 50 young people each week, living in areas of high deprivation and low arts engagement. Through St Helens Youth Theatre we help young people to learn new skills, feel more confident, make new friends and to have higher aspirations for their future. www.citadel.org.uk
Cultured: Cultured (St. Helens Cultural Education Partnership) is made up of representatives from the education sector (Primary through to FE and HE), St. Helens Council Arts, Library and Music services, The Citadel, FACT Liverpool, Curious Minds and Heart of Glass. By working together, we are able to address issues specific to the locality.
Working with a wide range of creative practitioners, Arts organisations and venues, we have put together a package for schools which includes authentic workshops with practicing artists, visits to local venues and support with planning, networking and CPD opportunities with colleagues, creative practitioners and Arts organisations. We have also worked with local industry to promote the creative sector in terms of further study and future job opportunities. We have 32 schools engaged in our 2018/2019 offer. Our Development Officer now serves as a point of contact for both the education sector and the Arts sector, making connections between them and ensuring that information reaches the right people.
Theme
Alcohol Awareness
Citadel Arts and Cultured have partnered to develop a new alcohol awareness commission to tackle the issue of teenage alcohol consumption in the borough. This will be the partnership’s first commission in what we hope will be a successful project over the coming year.
More young people than ever before are telling us that they are choosing not to drink alcohol. This is a choice that we want more young people to adopt. The consequences of underage drinking can be significant for young people and those that do choose to drink are at risk of both long and short-term harms. Some of the risks associated with adolescent drinking are:
- Intoxication and alcohol poisoning
- Impaired decision making leading to risky behaviours such as unwanted or unprotected sex
- Increased risk of fighting and violence
- Risk of coming into contact with police
Young people tell us they drink because ‘that’s what people do at weekends’. However, the earlier young people start drinking alcohol, the greater the risk for harm in the future. In St Helens, although the numbers have been reducing over recent years, we have some of the highest rates in the country for alcohol related harm in our adult population, and recent data shows we have one of the highest rates of under 18 admissions to hospital linked to alcohol use.
We need you to support us to address some of these issues.
What are we looking for?
The commissioned artists will be required to work with St Helens Youth Theatre 12-16 age group over 4-6 weeks to inform a piece of theatre. The workshops with St Helens Youth Theatre could inform the content of the finished piece and /or create content for inclusion in the finished piece e.g. in the form of digital content.
The plan is for the finished piece to ‘tour’ to secondary schools and libraries across St Helens during the Spring term of the 2019/20 academic year. The work will be shared nationally as part of the Citadel website. It is important to note all content must be suitable to be shown in public spaces.
Who are we encouraging to apply?
Individual artists, companies, collectives and collaborators with experience of working in youth / health settings with something interesting to say or share.
Who are the panel?
The commissioning panel will consist of representatives from Citadel Arts, Cultured, Public Health and St Helens Youth Theatre, and will be responsible for selecting the artist. Citadel Arts will manage the process and contract the successful candidate/s.
Budget
There is a budget of £9000 (including VAT if applicable). This is to include
- All artists time/travel
- Any materials/equipment used in creating the work
- Delivery of the finished piece
We can provide
- Advice and support
- Access to spaces (libraries and village halls) for visits, to run sessions or do some work.
- Introductions to the people and places of St Helens
There will be a programme of stage payments available for appointed artist/company/ collaboration.
- £2000 on appointment
- £4000 following a mid-point sharing event / meeting
- £3000 on completion of the commission
We cannot contribute towards travel costs for artists/companies/collaborators invited to presentation/selection day.
How to apply
Please send your whole submission as a single PDF or Word Document. This must include:
- Your full contact details
- Artists/company/collective CV or details of background and relevant previous work/projects
- Links to examples of your work online, (we recognise that you may want to show us work that is not freely available online. We confirm that any such examples/closed links will not be shared beyond Citadel Arts/Cultured and the commissioning panel)
- Confirmation that you can conform to the timetable described below
- A brief description of how you would approach this project (no more than two sides of A4) giving us a clear idea of:
- The approach that you would plan to use
- How your idea links to the theme
- What stages/processes you think would be necessary to complete the commission
- A performance schedule / Outline
- Confirmation that you understand what the budget is and what it covers
Submissions to be sent to Fay Lamb, Chief Executive, Citadel Arts faylamb@citadel.org.uk by Friday 15th November 2019.
Selection criteria
Our panel will assess and score all applications based on:
- A well-conceived proposal which links with the theme of Alcohol Awareness
- Feasibility of the proposal related to budget, time and how, where, and when it is to be presented.
- The proposal has followed our guidelines and all requested elements are present
- The selection panel encourages applications from artists and companies with protected characteristics including artists of colour and/or who identify as LGBTQ and/or disabled that are currently under-represented in St Helens.
Timetable
Date Activity Who
- 18th October 2019 Call out and publication of brief Citadel Arts
- 15th November 2019 Closing date for submissions Artists/companies/ collaborators
- 22 November 2019 Shortlisting and scoring by group members leading to a shortlist of 4 to 5 artists/companies/collaborators
Commissioning
Group
- 25 November 2019 Invitation to artists’ presentation event to shortlisted artists/companies/collaborators.
Citadel Arts
- W/C 2nd December 2019 Artists presentation and Interview Artists/companies/ collaborators
- 9th December 2019 artists/companies/collaborators selected & notified Citadel Arts
Copyright
Artists will retain copyright of all work that is produced. This commission requires that it be shown in multiple venues across St Helens in Spring 2020 including secondary schools and libraries, to be determined by Citadel Arts & Cultured. It also requires that the finished piece or a representation of the finished piece is made freely and permanently available via the Citadel Arts website.
If you have any questions arising from this brief, please contact
Fay Lamb, Chief Executive, Citadel Arts, 01744 753201, faylamb@citadel.org.uk