Susan Goodwin Associate Director Arts Connect

Collaboration between ASCEL WM and Blast Theory

Librarians as Creative Producers Librarians as enlightened commissioners, capable and confident of offering inspiring briefs for artists in the future.

ASCEL agreed to: Explore and agree a focus for a shared creative enquiry project Together with artists, explore potential art forms and creative approaches to raise the profile of their work with young people Develop the framework for an Arts Council England Grants for the Arts application

Librarians would like to explore how the arts can: Celebrate contemporary reading and creative writing – celebrating and amplifying ‘library-ness’ Persuade people into the library, especially people with low literacy and those hard to reach groups, who don’t normally come and to help them return as regular users Get people actively involved and feeling part of the library community – feeling a connection and wanting to come back

Bureau of Silly Ideas

Mark Storor

Blast Theory

What happened next Librarians found the combination of the 3 artists’ approaches inspiring All 3 artists invited to return to explore how their ideas might work across several libraries / areas Decided to develop the 3 projects in sequence, with APFOJ as the first

Susan Goodwin Associate Director Arts Connect susan.goodwin@wlv.ac.uk