Open House is a long-term creative collaboration between Kettle’s Yard art gallery and its neighbouring communities in North Cambridge. What initially started as an audience development programme resulted in broader impact developing pride, a sense of place, a reduction in social isolation and improved wellbeing.
The challenge
Kettle’s Yard is the University of Cambridge’s modern and contemporary art gallery and house museum. Traditionally visitors have been highly educated, middle-classes who are culturally confident. A number came locally from affluent areas of Cambridge or travelled from surrounding villages, London and internationally. Kettle’s Yard needed to change in order to be more relevant and welcoming to our local community in North Cambridge.
Cambridge is the most unequal city in terms of income in the UK. It has an embedded divide between the ‘town’ and the ‘gown’ (the university and it perceived elitist values). Kettle’s Yard is a House and gallery that presents outstanding modern and contemporary art. What began, largely, as an audience development project has now become a long-term collaboration with the community and gallery, which is now recognised as valued community asset.
Kettle’s Yard is geographically located in North Cambridge, which features significantly in the Indices of Multiple Deprivation 2019. Systemic inequalities have consequential, life-long impacts on individuals in this area; life-expectancy is over ten years lower than in more affluent parts of the city. The North Cambridge wards of Arbury and Kings Hedges have a negative notoriety and misperception in the city. Unfortunately, this serves to fuel a cycle of a lack of self-confidence, pride and social mobility amongst residents and intensifies the impact of systemic inequalities. This is manifested through high levels of social isolation, lower life expectancy and, due to higher costs of living in Cambridge, significant levels of poverty.
The solution
Artists are central to the history and ethos of Kettle’s Yard and the organisation believes that artists have extraordinary skills and ways of looking at the world, including in community settings. A community panel of local residents was formed. The panel represented different ages, backgrounds and organisations that lived and worked in the community. The community panel have been fundamental to Open House.
Since 2015, each year the Community Panel has selected an artist ‘in residence’ for a year within their community. The artist has a social arts practice, which means that working with people is central to creating their artwork. The artist spent time talking and getting to know the area. They were supported by the panel who would introduce them to various individuals or groups whilst they formulated a plan of activities.
Throughout the year the artist(s) then work with a number of groups, organisations or individuals over a period of time to explore one idea. This has ranged from well-being, architecture, agency, empathy, geography and community cohesion. The process of meaningful workshops and targeted projects have proven the most significant in impacting the local community, building confidence and pride. Community members have felt engaged, connected, heard and useful as well as developing increasing ownership of the community, the project and Kettle’s Yard.
The residency culminated in the creation of a new artwork. This took a variety of forms from a performative pop-up apothecary, a community feast and festival, a take-over of a local radio station, a new map and a series of objects and lenses installed in community locations. The impact of the artworks though was more significant by sharing positive news stations and events locally evoking a sense of pride and challenging and countering the negative perceptions of the area. It also impacted individuals with new friendships, broadened horizons, new skills and experiences and increase confidence and wellbeing.
The impact
Open House has touched the lives of many, many people, 21,637 to be precise, the majority of which come from North Cambridge. Some of these individuals are repeat participants, joining in activities year after year. 12,293 of those people have directly participated in 412 artist-led workshops, and Kettle’s Yard has mounted 20 community exhibitions, hosted 149 community events, and exhibited 908 community artworks through the Open House programme.
A major catalyst for instigating Open House was the markedly low number of local residents engaging with the gallery – in 2010 less than 0.3 per cent of Kettle’s Yard’s 75,000 visitors came from local neighbourhoods (Wafer Hadley). After substantial and sustained engagement with the communities of North Cambridge through Open House, there has been a staggering increase in gallery visitors coming from neighbourhoods on the gallery’s doorstep – between 2018-2021 on average 8.5 per cent of visitors asked came from postcodes CB4 (North Cambridge); a significant achievement with modest funding and resources, and in 10 years, no less.
Furthermore, the research reveals that many community participants found the programme to be an engaging and affirming experience that enhanced their wellbeing through participating in new cultural opportunities and by connecting with art and people; challenged their preconceived ideas of art and cultural institutions and, as a result, expanded their horizons and aspirations; and developed new skills, knowledge and understanding.
But perhaps, most strikingly, and in contrast to early findings captured in 2015, an increase in confidence was the most pervasive response. Research participants spoke of a personal growth in confidence through participating in Open House, in some cases, acting as a steppingstone to other opportunities. There were also examples of an enhanced sense of community ownership of Open House through participants shaping activity and gaining more control of the creative process, alongside a newfound confidence in critiquing the processes and practices of the programme. Community partners also saw Kettle’s Yard as a valuable community asset, approaching the gallery with ideas for creative projects and community events, now certain in their understanding of how a cultural organisation can support them and the communities they work with and serve. The findings also point towards a shift in the relationships between the communities of North Cambridge and Kettle’s Yard, one that is moving towards a more equitable process of exchange, where communities are supported in their self-determination and self- empowerment.
How is the new approach being sustained?
Open House has been taking place over the past seven years with support from Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Esme Fairbairn Foundation and Cambridge City Council. Open House will continue, and we seek to make it more embedded within the organisation, as opposed to an externally funded project. As Kettle’s Yard regroups from the pandemic new infrastructure is enabling this to happen and utilising our own resources will make this sustainable and embed our community with the work of the organisation.
Lessons learned
The experience of Open House has led to creation of a set of ‘Conditions for Creative Communities’:
- Be good neighbours
- Practice integrity, openness and kindness through collaboration
- Value everyone
- The journey is as Important as the destination
- Share ownership, share guardianship
- Let go and take a leap
- Allow time
- Enable creativity to bring people together
- Be clear and transparent
- Navigate ambitions and broaden horizons
Contact
Karen Thomas
Community Manager
[email protected]