Culture in Cheltenham: Have your Say!

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Live or work in Cheltenham? Your Views Matter

There are lots of changes and exciting things happening in Cheltenham right now, and one of those is the creation of a new culture board for Cheltenham. The board aims to build a strong alliance across Cheltenham’s cultural and creative communities via its representative structure and has created a draft strategy setting out a vision and a set of six big ideas. (You can read the draft here)

BUT we want to make sure everyone in the town has an opportunity to be involved.

We want to represent every sector ….

To ensure we are capturing the voice of the creative practitioner in visual arts as well as in other art forms Niki Whitfield from Cheltenham Open Studios, Sarah Bowden from University of Gloucestershire Hardwick Gallery and Louise Bardgett from Create Gloucestershire have been working together to develop an on-line survey. As members of the new culture board, we are working hard to represent and share back with the many diverse sectors in the arts such as visual arts and music in Cheltenham, as well as championing cross-cutting agendas such as digital, heritage and young people.

To ensure we are capturing the voice of the creative practitioner in visual arts as well as in other art forms we have been working together to develop an on-line survey, so we can get some feedback and hear your views, which will help shape and map out the way in which culture is supported in Cheltenham

With the welcome news that The Wilson museum and art gallery will be re-opening on the 23rd July but sadly Chapel Arts is closing at the end of July and an uncertainty about the economic climate we think this is a timely opportunity to see how we can support the arts and nurture its future development in this town.

We would be really grateful if you could take the time to complete the survey.

Your responses will give a snapshot into what you think, and what you would like to see, and some ideas in how that might happen. All responses will be anonymised, and will be shared back with the culture board, feeding into the overall cultural strategy and vision for Cheltenham. It's really important that the artists' voice is heard in a level playing field to all of the larger organisations and festivals, which is the whole point of the culture board.

We will be sharing the survey through our networks but we aren’t connected to everyone so do feel free to share wider amongst your own networks and groups. We are also open to chat to you in person, or with your group if this is easier to ensure your voices are heard.

Please only fill in the survey once, even if you receive it via different networks, as it will all be going to the same platform.

The closing date for the survey is Friday 29 July 2022.

Creative practitioner survey

The link is https://haveyoursay.cheltenham.gov.uk/strategy/culture-strategy-survey-for-creative-practitioners

There is also another wider survey, primarily aimed at residents, participants and audiences of culture in the town, if you would like to complete this as well.

Residents survey

https://haveyoursay.cheltenham.gov.uk/strategy/culture-survey-for-cheltenham

Please take this opportunity to have your say as a creative practitioner and or as a resident.

Many thanks in advance for taking the time to complete the survey.

Niki, Louise and Sarah

Visual ARTS Sector Reps

Cheltenham Culture Board