It's Our Birthday! Rising Turns Two
It’s been a whirlwind two years for Rising.
Born out of conversations with young people, we began the challenge of co-creating a unique, inclusive space for young artists to have a voice, be seen, get paid and develop their careers. These young people, many of who have struggled to get support for their creative practice or felt frustrated by their lack of access or voice within the city’s cultural spaces, have played an integral role in driving the success of Rising.
Fast forward two years, and now we’re beginning to see change, about to celebrate our 2nd birthday and have some really exciting things in the pipeline. Since our launch, we have provided over 180 16-25-year-olds with a mix of professional mentoring, workshops, commissioning opportunities and platforms to showcase work. We now have a range of creative partners and have formed meaningful relationships with other creative organisations across the city—but it hasn’t been easy! We have invested a huge amount personally and relied on voluntary support from others who have shared our vision, but it’s been worth it.
So we want to celebrate in the best way we know how: a party! We’re a little agency with a big voice and an even bigger army of supporters. We want this event to mark the successes (and the challenges) of the past two years, and toast the exciting future ahead of us.
We’re going to be launching a brand new website at the party where we can showcase more work from more featured artists, expand our bespoke service, offer a great new commissioning strand and speak to the sector as well as our audience of artists. We will create more online resources to support up-skilling emerging young artists, and also the sharing of knowledge and practice with the creative sector.
We’ll also be launching our new online shop for selling work and merchandise by our associate artists. Exciting stuff!
Our birthday is not only an opportunity to celebrate with us but also a chance to let us know what you think about our future plans and aspirations.
There will also be a chance to win some of our new merchandise and other exciting prizes in our birthday raffle. Put the date in your diaries and bring your friends and the dog (actually, not the dog…but definitely your friends!). Come on down, meet us and share what role you might want to play in revolutionising the creative arts and empowering young artists over a drink (or two).
But that’s not all.
With the help of our Youth Board, we have developed a ten-year business strategy and have committed to making Rising more ambitious and even better. Long term, we’re going to be refining our visual identity and expanding our visible presence in the streets of Bristol through artwork and pop-up workshops and events. We want to push our commissioning strand and get more of our artists paid work. We have also been exploring the idea of creating pop-up studio spaces for young artists and who knows–maybe one day we might even have our own dedicated space!
ANd... birthday REFLECTIONS
Last weekend we celebrated our second birthday! Wow, and what a blast it was. There was a lot of talking, networking, dancing, drinking and of course, damn good art. Thank you to everyone who came and to those who were with us in spirit. It was great to bring together all of the people that we have worked with - partners, supporters, organisations and the young artists who are at the heart of what we do - to celebrate what we have achieved and highlight some of the things that we’re excited to be doing in the near future.
Now, don’t get us wrong, we’re still very young, toddlers in fact, but we’re proud of the big impact that we’ve made on the industry so far. We’ve successfully launched the OpenUp programme, where organisations have the chance to get valuable insight from young people of colour about their organisations. We’ve developed OnBoard - the opportunity for organisations to shake up their governance and recruit trained young people on to their advisory boards. We’ve expanded the WhoseCulture project - recruiting a new Project Coordinator and Social Media Manager - to enable us to work with young people of colour in some of Bristol’s most disadvantaged areas. Pretty exciting stuff.
Over the last six months in particular, we’ve learnt a lot about what works, what doesn’t work so well and what we want to do differently. We’re making a pledge to you, right now, that we will continue to champion a bottom-up approach, bringing young people in and disrupting the status quo. We will continue to take risks and offer positive provocations. We will strive to make and create more paid opportunities for young artists and represent them with integrity. But some things are going to change...
At the party, we relaunched a fresh new website (which you are on right now, lucky you), our brand new online Shop and some new work from our Featured Artists. We raffled some brilliant prizes including: Spike Associates membership; Watershed cinema tickets; a catalogue and tickets to the new show at the RWA; a meal for two in Spike Cafe and a selection of our wonderful new artists' t-shirts and stickers. Thanks to all those organisations and companies for their generous support! With the money raised from the raffle, and selling drinks and tasty samosas, we now have additional funds which are going right back to support more young artists - so thank you all!
We’re excited for the future. Roll on the next two years!
Team Rising