University of Sunderland - Autumn Lights Commission

Our ambition for Autumn Lights is for a project that creatively engages with the ten wards we work across in North Sunderland and South Tyneside. We hope the commission will provide opportunities for dialogue with local communities and enable residents in the Cultural Spring wards to get involved in a visual arts programme that quite literally illuminates the streets.

There is scope to include additional art forms – writing, digital media, music, theatre, dance, craft, film for example.

Our ambition is for the work to take place during summer - autumn 2016 and to be realised in November 2016. We envisage that this work will culminate in a series of events or a one-off performance.

We want this commission to tell the story of our communities and to shine the light on what people have achieved so far. We are keen for there to be a strong digital element in the work produced through this commission this may be in terms of the artistic work produced or via the dissemination of the work.

We are looking for something that is spectacular, and engaging and that will have a life after this original commission, for example something that could go onto tour (depending on future funding).

Autumn Lights

The Cultural Spring was borne out of a desire to bring arts right onto people’s streets, onto the estates in which they live. You may or may not know that after the second world war there was a desire in South Tyneside to bring culture to the masses and one of the ways that the local government sought to do this was through naming the streets of newly built estates after famous painters (Whiteleas) and famous authors (Biddick Hall). For example, Galsworthy Road, Belloc Avenue, Orwell Close, Rembrandt Avenue and Manet Gardens.

As this is our third year into this programme we want to revisit this idea and close the circle of this particular journey by revisiting our initial starting point. We want to commission a new narrative through the Cultural Spring and bring the spotlight onto these wards in South Tyneside.

We have achieved so much over the past two and a half years –

We have delivered 200 projects

To date we have engaged 25,000 people in a creative activity We have delivered nine cultural calendar commissions to date Supported 30 Your Art projects

Supported 250 artists

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