Post by Jenny Hughes

For an excellent introduction to Bolton at Home’s unique ‘Percent for Art’ scheme, have a look at the 7 minute film below. Here, Dawn Obe-Yates (Percent for Art Officer for Bolton South) gives an overview of the aims of Percent for Art and key points in its development, from its early ‘mosaics and murals phase’ to its current focus on the use of art in social and community regeneration. Bolton at Home is a social landlord responsible for 18,000 homes across Bolton, and Percent for Art is an internationally unique initiative which embeds the arts into the core mission of social housing. Bolton at Home currently employs four arts officers who work closely with residents and community development teams to develop art projects in neighbourhoods.

For more on Percent for Art see previous blog posts ‘Humanising our public spaces’, ‘Humanising our public spaces – part 2’, ‘Seeing Red – Melodramatics (part 1)’ and ‘Seeing Red – Melodramatics (part 2)’. Also see interviews with Dawn Obe-Yates, Gaynor Cox (Percent for Art Officer, Bolton East), George Caswell (former Chief Executive, Bolton at Home) and the Cawdor Campbell Resident’s Association on the Poor Theatres database (put ‘Bolton’ in the ‘region’ search box to search all resources connected to Percent for Art and the Octagon Theatre and Bolton at Home partnership).

Interview with Jon Lord (current Chief Executive, Bolton at Home) and Melodramatics (a women’s theatre group supported by Percent for Art and the Octagon Theatre) will be uploaded to the database soon.

Tags: community art, regeneration, social housing, socially engaged art

By admin-poor in Austerity, Blog, Bolton, Bolton at Home, community, Octagon Theatre, Percent for Art, regional theatre, social housing on October 7, 2015