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Press Release 4 April 2012
New Brewery Arts Success Story
New Brewery Arts is celebrating a super successful month in March.
Firstly, an Arts Council Grant was secured that will be worth £227,852 over three years from 2012 to 2015. Last year New Brewery Arts was selected by the Arts Council England as one of their National Portfolio Organisations, providing excellence in the arts and Great Art for Everyone. Ali Russell, CEO and Artistic Director, said "It is an enormous achievement and great honour to be part of the National Portfolio of Arts Council England and is affirmation of Arts Council England support for our ongoing artistic programme. We are delighted and look forward to building on our strengths in the future."
Ali Russell was equally thrilled to receive a Cultural Champion Award from Arts and Business South West in recognition of her work with Create Gloucestershire – the new network of arts organisations and artists whose manifesto is to advocate and promote the Arts throughout Gloucestershire. The award was presented by Don Foster MP at a reception at the Holburne Museum in Bath in early March.
New Brewery Arts received a further accolade when it beat over 80 other organisations to be awarded a grant of over £12,000 by The Baring Foundation, to deliver a participatory arts outreach project focussed around the elderly in Cirencester and the surrounding district. The Making Memories project will be working with lead artist Claire Loder and two groups of elderly care home residents, some in the early stages of dementia, and 6 isolated elderly carers, on a life enhancing journey combining ceramics and memories to create lasting portraits of ill or lost loved ones. It will culminate in an exhibition of work at New Brewery Arts in summer 2013. New Brewery Arts will be working closely with partners Hunters Care Home and Care Share to deliver this topical project.
Chairman of New Brewery Arts Raymond Theodoulou said
“New Brewery Arts has had a successful year during which a number of changes in strategy have been introduced in response to challenging times for arts organisations. The support of the Arts Council now confirmed for three years is an endorsement of the management's new approach. Securing a grant from the Baring Foundation is a fantastic achievement in the face of fierce competition from other arts organisations and further confirms NBA as an excellent provider of community services in the arts”.
Previous Press
Lives in Landscape
Oral historian Alan Dein visited New Brewery Arts to interview two of our favourite people, Celestino Valenti and Arthur Lowe, for Lives in a Landscape, Radio 4's award winning documentary series. Alan tracks down people with stories to tell that reflect - in sometimes offbeat ways - the pleasure, the pain and the particularity of life in contemporary Britain.
Celestino is a talented artist and our resident wireworker, based in Studio 11 at New Brewery Arts, where he is also a tutor. Alan found him teaching Life Drawing - with Arthur as the model. We heard what they had to say on Wednesday, 8 June, at 11am on Radio 4.
Cotswold Life
An interview with Ali Russell, Chief Executive of New Brewery Arts, was featured in the February 2011 edition of Cotswold Life magazine.
Wilts & Glos Standard video news
This video was shot just after we re-opened in 2008. Things have changed a lot since then, but it gives a flavour of what is available to see and do at New Brewery Arts.