Current Projects and Awards
From time to time the Foundation initiates projects to develop various aspects of the arts in the two counties. For some years it underpinned the financing of an independent Company, the Herefordshire and Worcestershire Arts Education Agency, whose functions were subsequently taken over by the two County Councils.
In 2003 the Foundation launched Singworks in Worcestershire. The aim of this project was to initiate a range of activities that would stimulate and develop singing opportunities for young people in the county. Through the project singing in education, worship and other community contexts would be better connected so that an improved platform for the development of an integrated singing culture could be created, nurtured and sustained.
Under its inspirational Manager Cathy Dew, Singworks went on to become one of the country's best- regarded projects of its kind, and cited as such in Howard Goodall's seminal report which accompanied the launch of the government's national Singup programme in 2006. A series of projects such as Boys make noise in Bromsgrove, the countywide Worcester Young Voices supported by Youth Music, Playground Songs and Games, ChOral History, a revival of the Radio Ballads which brought to life lost traditions around Kidderminster and which received a major grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Worcester Cathedral's Chorister Outreach programme, and an oustanding production of Britten's Noye's Fludde for the Three Choirs Festival are examples of successes which have touched many schools. Singworks is currently being reviewed following Cathy Dew's move to Germany last year. It is hoped to continue the project in association with Worcestershire County Council's Arts Education team soon.
In 2008, the Foundation invited Meadow Arts to launch a programme to commission arresting pieces of outdoor art works for display in the two counties. Meadow Arts began this work with a major show at Attingham Park with a piece from that exhibition now being sited in the garden of the Commandery in Worcester. Further pieces will come from an extensive show at Croft Castle Tell it to the Trees when it finishes there in September 2009.
In April 2009, a report on the Economic and Social Benefit of the arts in Worcestershire was published. Worcestershire County Council agreed to the Foundation's suggestion to commission such a study, and co-funded the cost. The result was the discovery that for every £1 contributed from local authority sources in the county, an astonishing £32 was returned by way of economic value. The study covered all six authorities and conducted case studies of six leading institutions - Malvern Theatres, Worcester Live, the Shindig small-scale touring programme, the Palace Theatre, Redditch, Number 8, Pershore and the Worcester Three Choirs Festival. The hope is that the evidence that this empirical study revealed would help to underpin the case for continued local authority funding of the arts in the future.
A vital component of the exercise was the devising by the researchers ERS of a toolkit whereby arts organisations could uniformly collect date on their economic and social benefits in the format increasingly required by local authorities who follow the indicators set out in the County's Local Area Agreement. The County Arts officer is introducing usage of the toolkit through the new County Arts Forum which was a direct result of the study.
