We need your help!

Care to Culture is a space for Care experienced artists to develop, create and learn, but unfortunately we have had to pause our sessions due to an unsuccessful ace bid. We are asking everyone we know and everyone we don’t know for a little bit of help to get us through the final leg of our marathon

Established in 2020 Care to Culture began with a mission to change the creative and employment landscape for Care Experienced artists. Born from a frustration with the way Care is shown on stages and in community spaces, Care to Culture is an alternative way to connect with and develop people from Care Experienced backgrounds, delivering financial literacy training, offering paid artistic theatre training and leading with trauma informed holistic processes.

Our work is led for and by Care Experienced artists and co-created by the participants on our projects.

We offer a safer and braver space to build, play and make mistakes for care experienced artists.

Find out more about us at: Care to Culture's Website

Check out our intro video

Why this is important

We created Care to Culture as a safer space for care-experienced artists and young people to find a community, learn from each other and train.

Whilst we recognise there is a space to tell and develop stories dedicated to the care experience, the issue is that most projects dedicated to care-experienced people, focus on telling stories that focus on the care experience or continue a particular narrative of care that is detrimental to how communities and organisations see us and our potential as artists. There are too many spaces trauma mining and using our stories for the benefit of funders, donors and audience growth.

The reality is that many care experienced young people who want to take part in art, want to see themselves represented on stages, gain experiences and learn how to earn a long-term living as an artist without fear of bankruptcy, so that they can tell their own stories in a safe and trauma informed way.

The reality is that art should be accessible to everyone, but it requires a stable support system and a lot of care, plus the development of a social etiquette that you learn when programmes are dedicated to training you to do so.

So we created this programme to even the playing field and we plan to continue to establish more so that we reach more and more people as our projects go on. That’s why we need your help to finish this final run of the project. Our participants deserve their chance in the sun!

"Without Care 2 Culture I'd be much less confident about the strength of my skills and how much I deserve to be in the spaces I want to be in. Very few spaces acknowledge the simultaneous connection and separation being care experienced provides and c2c gives me and many others somewhere to acknowledge what our experiences let us bring to the table without making it the focus/ our only notable point. It was needed, it's still needed and it'll probably always be needed, whether it's available or not." - A - Participant on Cohort 1

The Programme

The Pathway Plan is our six-month development project, working with 10 care-experienced artists aged 18-30 over 24 sessions who are not in employment, education or training. The group are trained in performance skills and creative development, culminating in a production in collaboration with a care-experienced writer.

Over weekly sessions, the participants learn:

Our previous shows have been at the Bush Theatre and Riverside Studios.

What do we Offer?

Care to culture was the first place where I felt safe and comfortable being myself. It is a hub where people were are meant with compassion, without Care To Culture I wouldn’t have the confidence to stand up for myself and ask for the things I need to from an accessibility point of view. Being in a place where everyone has had similar experiences to myself growing up allowed me to accept myself and my upbringing and learn how to navigate adult-hood in a better way. Without Care to Culture, I’d be in a dark place with no confidence that I would have a career in the arts, yet one year on I’m a working creative who believes in their abilities to go far in the world and that is thanks to the C2C team" - R - Participant on Cohort 2

The Ask

After receiving multi-year funding from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, we are now halfway through our third year of the programme. Unfortunately as we weren't successful in receiving our much needed ACE top up and due to the delays in funding,the project cannot be completed without a large sacrifice to the integrity of the course, meaning that our participants would not get the same opportunities and experiences as previous cohorts have.

Throughout the last three years we have continuously developed this project through the feedback and evaluation of the participants- this is an entirely participant led space and we do not want to have to disappoint our communities.

We are currently looking to raise around £11000 at a minimum to be able to run the project to its fullest.

Any little helps!

But we also recognise there is a cost of living crisis (it's partly why we do this work) - so if you can't contribute please share far and wide! You never know who's in your circle.

Thank you for your donation!