Friction Arts
Photo by Roman Tanaseychuk.
Friction Arts is a community arts organisation in central Birmingham. It works hyper-locally in Highgate, as well as across Birmingham and in parts of the wider West Midlands. It runs a youth programme to nurture young creative and artistic talent in the city, a creative programme that produces high-quality art programmes locally, nationally and internationally, and it delivers targeted training for artists - particularly, community artists - to support them develop a creative practice. Friction Arts is also an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation, 2018-2022.
I was Operations Coordinator and Producer at Friction Arts and a member of the senior management team. I line-produced the youth and creative programmes, a portfolio of 5 projects that ran concurrently, and managed a team of 4 lead artists and 1 project manager who produced the projects.
As part of the senior management team, I strategically planned the future direction of the organisation, including ways to make Friction Arts more operationally sustainable. I also fundraised for projects, completed evaluations, set and analysed budgets, and ensured that the hyper-local arts projects the organisation produced adhered to the Arts Council’s national aims, particularly around co-creation and artist development.