Culture Studio CIC is an emerging creative cultural production company that, after two years of research and of creating cultural and educational networks in Britain and India, is beginning to deliver its exciting vision.
Culture Studio is passionate about the transformative power of arts and crafts. We showcase arts and crafts practices that can become sustainable. As a not-for-profit, we promote dynamic arts and crafts collaboration and exchange between India and the UK through enterprise and cultural projects. We champion the creative case for diversity and are always looking for innovative ways to use culture to help generate social and cultural impacts.
As an organisation that makes connections between organisation’s and people as a way of delivering services in new ways to disadvantaged communities, Culture Studio will broker relationships between leading arts and cultural organisations and those that operate at the grassroots.
Culture Studio will also address enterprise in terms of how people can acquire the skills, knowledge and confidence to produce, present and market cultural work. In particular, Culture Studio will look to embed enterprise and self-management skills with its targeted disadvantaged communities.
In these ways, Culture Studio demonstrates its commitment to social and entrepreneurial equity.
Our concern for social, financial and cultural returns reflects Culture Studio CIC’s status as a registered not-for-profit social enterprise and makes it a reliable, transparent and assessable not-for-profit organisation and company to support.
Culture Studio CIC inspires people and communities to make arts and crafts part of their lives with imaginative projects that celebrate inclusivity and diversity by creating opportunities for marginalised communities in the UK and India to fulfil themselves in enterprising ways.
Culture Studio CIC is a creative production company whose current focus is to forge imaginative links between Indian and British arts, crafts and culture by promoting enterprise, exchange and education, especially for those who experience disadvantage.
In its early years, Culture Studio is focusing its high quality international projects upon offering cultural opportunities in the UK, ones that involve making links between Indian artists and emerging British artists and bringing benefit of the cultural exchange to grass-root communities, particularly those who reside in regions with a large south Asian diaspora population.
Culture Studio Craft Store (CSCS), Culture Studio CIC’s sister trading company, will extend its current remit of promoting Indian craft workers in the UK market to launch new and emerging British designers and craft workers. As well as being a selling platform, CSCS attends emerging talent shows such as the annual New Designers show in London, seeks to link with design courses in universities and explores current trends of craft sales and marketing. This research into market practices provides cultural and business knowhow that also informs Culture Studio CIC’s work with artists. CSCS will provide creative enterprise courses in the craft sector and can use its own history and practice – as well as others’ experiences – to help inspire others to establish their own creative businesses. Please visit: www.culturestudio.co.uk
We encourage people, especially those from economically disadvantaged locations in the UK, by providing distinctive projects that could offer ways into and make more accessible careers in the arts, crafts and other creative industries.
As an organisation that focuses upon individuals’ potential and achievements, Culture Studio will assist Indian artists to develop sustainable livelihoods. In the UK we will develop grassroots mentoring and training schemes, especially for young people, in partnership with leading institutions; support emerging British artists that we work with and encourage our varied contacts to develop their enterprise competencies so that they can progress towards sustainable independence.
Culture Studio will offer young people in areas of social and economic disadvantage opportunities to train and participate in its arts, crafts, cultural and heritage projects. This will enable those who wish to consider the next steps in their career pathways, which could include the creative sector.
Our sister company Culture Studio Craft Store, sells fair trade, hand-crafted, creative artefacts made by disadvantaged artisans in India. It reinvests its profit into arts and community projects in India and the UK in order to help fulfil Culture Studio’s mission. Please support our store www.culturestudio.co.uk which is listed in the Buy Social directory.
Being a social enterprise Culture Studio CIC seeks to provide advice and guidance to people about the career opportunities they can take up in the crafts and wider creative and cultural sector in the UK.
Our sister company Culture Studio Craft store will focus on developing enterprise led projects and we are kickstarting this program of work by launching a starter 2 day Creative Enterprise course at the Curve, Slough’s new cultural and community hub, on Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th February 2017. Culture Studio Craft Store will be offering its two-day creative enterprise course. On the first day attenders will learn how to make a simple piece of jewellery with intemperate jewellery maker Amanda Denison. On the second day, The Design Trust is leading an interactive creative enterprise workshop where attenders will learn about how to effectively use marketing and social media to set up their own craft businesses from home.
Tickets are available on Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/introduction-to-jewellery-making-by-amanda-denison-tickets-29817871055
Sat 4th Feb 10:30-13:30pm
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/introduction-to-jewellery-making-by-amanda-denison-tickets-29972091332
Sat 4th Feb 14:30-17:30pm
Culture Studio creates projects that link India and the UK and that advance culture, education and business practice. Working with partners in both countries, Culture Studio forges links that help grow and sustain arts activities. These projects generate opportunities for people to develop understanding, competencies, communication and, as an outcome, their economic sustainability.
Culture Studio is beginning to produce distinctive, high quality, artistic exchange projects that link disadvantaged artists and communities across the UK and India. In the UK, hard to reach communities, especially ones with a large South Asian diaspora population, are locations where there may be limited engagement with the arts and which are full of promise.
Our initial UK interest is to create a body of work in the areas of Slough identified by the local authority, Arts Council England and other bodies as needing improved community involvement and participation in the arts. This will be allied with our focus on encouraging self-employment and transitions to fields of cultural and other employment and the development of core enterprise skills by members of our targeted communities.
Culture Studio desires to give existing and emerging artists in the UK exciting opportunities to collaborate with Indian partners in order to create new arts and craft work. As the areas where participation and engagement in the arts are often working class as well as black, minority ethnic and refugee, there is a clear cultural deficit that needs to be addressed. Culture Studio will seek to add to the range of possibilities that the communities it works with can access and explore.
Culture Studio reaches out, reaches within and reaches across communities. We will facilitate exchange, mentor those we engage with, test new ways of working and extend our range and impact through the digital exchange artistic programs and by developing digital audiences.
Culture Studio believes that digital media can enable people to participate in high quality cultural programmes and that new models and ways of working and earning an income can be developed through digital exchange. The relatively low cost thresholds associated with digital exchange, combined with its international reach, can help enable cultural skills transfer, work, education and trade opportunities. The creative energy of digital exchange can inspire ways of earning an income as well as opportunities for creative collaboration.
As marginal rural and urban Indian arts and crafts communities develop work in their own right and through Culture Studio’s projects, we will work to protect their interests through Reuters’ pro bono service, which helps to draw up legal contracts. Working with partner arts, cultural and social organisations in India, it will be possible to support, for example, effective access for women to act as producers and makers as they might otherwise be marginalised.
The mobile nature of digital technology enables creative and collaborative exchanges between a wide range of people, whilst the educational orientation of Culture Studio’s work helps to turn consumers of art into producers.
The Partition and the Puppetry projects are being created by Culture Studio CIC to both celebrate Indian Independence as well as to commemorate the 70th year of India/ Pakistan partition.
Partition: Women’s Voices heritage project- for the 70th Anniversary of the partition of the British Indian Empire into the independent countries of India and Pakistan. This project examines the cultural past and present of the women who experienced the horrors of Partition. Culture Studio CIC is partnering for this project with Aik Saath, Slough’s outstanding grassroots community development organisation. Please visit http://www.aiksaath.com/ to learn more about their work. We will update this section with new project developments.
Puppetry Project: A unique Indian and UK puppetry digital exchange project involving UNIMA India from Delhi and a leading British University is being developed for Slough communities. The project will offer a practical demonstration of the creative case for diversity. We will update this section with new project developments.
I am the founder and producer at Creative Studio CIC, a new social enterprise that promotes diverse and inclusive approaches to art and craft enterprise. With fifteen years of experience as a business, marketing and arts manager, I am well-placed to deliver cultural services between institutions and countries. I have specialised in exploring links between different organsations and cultures and in making culture accessible to a wider audience. My work means that I can shape, mould and deliver tailored, effective and distinctive projects on time and on budget. Please do get in touch if you are interested in supporting or collaborating with Culture Studio CIC.
