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Collaborate project spotlight: equitable partnerships

Collaborate project spotlight

Find out more about the partnership between Rising Arts Agency and Andreana Drencheva, King’s College London

Equitable partnerships

Rising Arts Agency with Andreana Drencheva, Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, King’s College London

Equitable partnerships: power sharing in the cultural sector

This partnership was awarded a research grant in June 2022 as part of the first round of funding of the Centre for Cultural Value’s Collaborate programme.

The fund looks to support innovative new partnerships between cultural sector practitioners and academics to explore under-explored questions around cultural value.

Several young people signing a large poster that reads ‘We Are Rising’ from the 2021 WhoseFuture campaign and designed by RTiiiKA
WhoseFuture 2021 Campaign by Rising Arts Agency, Photo: Bryony Jade Throup

What will the project explore?

Cultural value is often created through collaboration, yet the specific dynamics of these collaborations are currently under-explored.

Rising Arts Agency is a Bristol-based community of young creatives aged 16–30 mobilising others for radical social, political and cultural change. Working with Andreana Drencheva from King’s College London, the partnership will explore the nature of truly equitable partnerships in the cultural sector, particularly how power imbalances manifest for grassroots organisations and marginalised creatives working with cultural sector institutions.

The project aims to shift the focus from how marginalised creatives and grassroots organisations can navigate these power imbalances – where the burden is on them – to how these imbalances can be removed to increase cultural value for creatives, cultural organisations and audiences.

This research will use Rising Arts Agency as a microcosm: part of a grassroots ecosystem, where marginalised creatives come for support and cultural partnerships are being continually modelled. Using reflection, interviews, diaries, labs, sharing events and archives these personal experiences will be placed in the context of the wider sector with benefits for institutions, similar grassroots organisations, marginalised creatives and funders.

We will update you with more findings from the project over the course of the next year.

Project learning and findings

A group of people talking in a circle at Rising Arts Agency's 'This Is The Work' event, surrounded by shelves of books at Bristol's Bookhaus bookshop.
Rising Arts Agency - This Is The Work (Photo by Olu Osinoiki)

This Is The Work: reflecting on new research findings about power in partnerships

Profile of a person in a bookshop. They are wearing a bright yellow hoodie and holding a camera on a tripod.
Photo by Olumide Osinoiki/Rising Arts Agency.

In Arts Professional: Power in partnerships

Person in an orange shirt and green beanie hat crouching down setting up recording equipment. There are microphones and a laptop set up on the floor.
Photo by Olumide Osinoiki. Rising Arts Agency.

Podcasting the power in partnerships

Find out more about our Collaborate fund

Musicians from the Manchester Camerata orchestra
Image: Manchester Camerata

Collaborate projects

Find out more about the projects that have been awarded funding from our Collaborate programme
Image shows the inside of a gallery with white walls and images on the walls. In the background is a visitor wearing a face covering.
Days Like These exhibition. Image: The Lowry

Funding

Our Collaborate fund supports innovative new research partnerships between the cultural sector and academics.

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