Case Study
Southbank Centre
Southbank Centre's Emerging Creative programme: demystifying arts and culture for 13-18 year olds
(Above) Photo Credit: Future Exhibition Makers, Southbank Centre, 2023, Photo credit: David Carter
Fund: Special Interest – Arts & Heritage
Who – Southbank Centre (SBC) is the largest arts centre in the UK based in London, offering a world-class arts and cultural programme. In the last full financial year, SBC delivered 5,054 events, 52% of which were free, and engaged with 11,603 children and young people.
What: In 2021, SBC was awarded a three-year grant of £100,000 to support the Emerging Creatives programming strand which seeks to open up opportunities in arts and culture for 13 – 18 year olds. Three distinct projects were supported in this strand: Take Two, which places quality art from the Arts Council Collection in local secondary schools; Uncovering Careers in the Arts which provides open days hosted at the Southbank Centre, shedding light onto routes into creative careers; and Future Exhibition Makers, a distinct course for young people into specific aspects of the cultural sector.
When you see the artworks online, you can’t really see the real size of it, or the shades of the colours. Every time we looked at it, we could see a different thing.
Pupil from London Borough of Lambeth, experiencing art from Arts Council Collection at their school as part of Take Two programme.
(Above) Photo Credit: Future Exhibition Makers, Southbank Centre, 2023, Photo credit: David Carter
In the past 3 years, the project has delivered/engaged:
- 1,221 pupils from four London Borough of Lambeth Secondary schools, who took part in the Take Two programme.
- Seven Uncovering Careers in the Arts days.
- Two iterations of a new Future Exhibition Makers course, which to date has been delivered with 31 young participants from across London. Skills in archiving and exhibition making were taught, leading to the group’s first exhibition in the Royal Festival Hall and online in 2023 (audience: est. 3,563 in person visitors, 487 online) and a subsequent exhibition in the Royal Festival Hall by the 2024 cohort (est. 17,650 visitors).
Learning:
Feedback on Uncovering Careers days has led to SBC diversifying the format of the day, designing sections of the event for distinct audiences: a schools day, partnerships with other organisations for young and emerging creatives to learn more about behind-the-scenes roles in the creative industries, and linking careers days with the wider SBC artistic programming – for example, a day linked to Chaka Khan’s Meltdown Festival, and curatorial and technical tours of the Hayward Gallery centred around exhibitions.
The pilot Future Exhibition Makers course was a programme successfully co-delivered between the SBC Archive team and the Creative Engagement team, who had not worked so closely together in the past. A case study of the project is featured on The National Archives (Innovation and Risk) site.
The value of establishing an alumni network, supporting emerging creatives to benefit from peer to peer learning, will inform opportunities for network building across SBC’s work.
