Participants from English Heritage, LIFT, VocalEyes, Stratford Circus, Harrow Arts Centre, The Albany, Mousetrap Theatre Projects and the Bishopsgate Institute came together this month for our Arts Ambassadors seminar.  We spent a lively afternoon thinking and talking about:

-    different arts ambassador models
-    what we can learn from past and existing schemes
-    ways in which an ambassador scheme could help to engage with new audiences, especially those that we find hard-to-reach

This session was over subscribed so we?ll run another one later in the year (likely in November, exact date tbc).  If you?d like to come along and let me know.  In the meantime you can download my free resource from the session here. Alis from  Bishopsgate Institute had this to say about the seminar:

?very thought provoking, not just in offering practical advice on things, but offering up new and different models to think about. This will really help me lead discussion with my colleagues about what is right for us.  (Alis Templeton, Marketing Manager, Bishopsgate Institute)

I?ll be delivering a new peer learning programme for Create KX between October and December this year, following the success of the first one. I?m thrilled about this as it means I can offer free places! Participants come together for 3 half-day sessions to exchange ideas, debate challenges and engage with case studies of good practice about inclusion.  Previous participants have come from LIFT, Camden Arts Centre, The Almeida, Circus Space, Camden People?s Theatre, Only Connect and The Wellcome Library . 

If you?re interested get in touch - priority will be given to Camden based organisations as a condition of the funding.

We know community engagement practitioners value their contacts and networks more than most and that most of you are networking champions.  To help you out we created our local networking events ? free 2 hour sessions designed to refresh your contacts book with over 50 people while chatting over a glass of wine.  Rest assured that if you?re on this list you?ll automatically get an invite to any events in your area.  This year we?ll also be inviting you to join some different network opportunities, this time based around your own professional interests rather than geography?   

So if you?re particularly interested in any of the following either let me know or keep an eye out for opportunities in future emails
- Arts in criminal justice settings
- Participation for young people
- Engaging older people

Audiences London grabbed the opportunity to work with the Cultural Leadership Programme and LIFT this year, to support a Peach placement that would lead to the development of a community engagement model for regeneration areas.  Since Christmas, I've been working with Susie Miller both as her mentor and as part of her placement steering group.  Susie is an applied theatre practitioner, has a background in stand up comedy and also works with Shoreditch Trust.  She's recently back from a research trip to Chicago where she met with the influential arts leader Arnold Aprill, Executive Director of Chicago Arts Partnership in Education (CAPE) - listen here to a recent talk he gave where he explains where arts organisations have got community engagement wrong...

Susie will be sharing her model in the autumn; in the meantime her intergenerational group the Arts Activists will be performing at the Molten Festival on the 21st August.  You can also .

Your role will be to develop closer relationships with the UK-based communities and language speakers of the international poets they work with. This is part time role with home working.  Paid £30-40k pro rata. Email  for an application pack. 

If you'd rather not receive community engagement emails you can opt out at any time by .  If you have colleagues or friends that would like to receive this too, they are all welcome and can join up by following this quick link.

Best wishes

Helen