Don’t Get Any Ideas: The podcast about Creative Civic Change
Welcome to Don’t Get Any Ideas, a podcast series all about Creative Civic Change – a four-year experimental funding programme supporting 15 communities across England to shape, lead and commission arts and creative interventions, to make positive social change where they live.
Meet the hosts
Deeply involved in Creative Civic Change from the very beginning, our hosts Heather Peak Morison and George Hill travel the country physically and virtually to catch up with the people that made Creative Civic Change happen in 15 very different communities and hear how creativity has been making those communities stronger.
Heather Peak Morison has been working with Creative Civic Change for the past four years as a Critical Friend and as a socially engaged artist. She has worked with many of the communities on their social sculptures as they have grown and formed. Her work is often performance-based and site-specific, existing as one-off events, social projects, or large-scale installations and buildings in public spaces.
George Hill is a resident and a member and co-chair of Creative Kingswood & Hazel Leys in Corby. Recently at the age of 60, and very much a result of Creative Civic Change, he gave up his full-time work to embark on self-employment as an artist and community development specialist. Mentored over the course of Creative Civic Change by Heather, George is creating a body of work which upcycles random objects and furniture giving them a new lease of life with his unique brand of art.
Episode 1: Let’s ‘hover above’ Creative Civic Change in Corby
In this episode of Don’t Get Any Ideas, Heather and George begin in Corby, home to George, Helen’s workplace and Heather’s childhood home. As part of their work with the Creative Kingston and Hazel Leys Creative Civic Change project, they have been regularly taking time throughout to hover above the intense work and talk about what is important to them in the wider world. In this podcast, we hear their thoughts as they hover above for the last time.
Episode 2: Let’s talk about the power of community radio
In this episode of Don’t Get any Ideas, Heather and George travel to Kensington in Liverpool to meet Michaela and Steve at the Croissant of Inequality, and record their podcast at their amazing community radio station, Liverpool Community Radio. They talk about the power
of telling your own story.
Episode 3: Thinking about how to hold onto our creative community spaces
In this episode of Don’t Get Any Ideas, Heather and George travel to Walthamstow to visit William Morris Big Local who have working with local art group Wood Street Walls to discuss holding onto creative community spaces in London.
Episode 4: How to follow the light when times are dark
In this episode of Don’t Get any Ideas, Heather and George travel to East Marsh in Grimsby to meet Josie Moon, local resident, community activist, writer, artist and choir leader. Tucked away in the local market they discuss how Josie looks for the light in bleak times.
Episode 5: Thinking very very very long term and artists as activists
In this episode of Don’t Get Any Ideas, Heather and George travel to Stoke to visit the Portland Inn Project. They learn how to imagine as a community what the next century might look like and whether the Portland Inn Project is successful in its application to Arts Council England, to be one of its regularly funded organisations.
Episode 6: Cross-pollination poetry in creative civic change communities
In this episode of Don’t Get Any Ideas, Heather and George travel virtually to Cornwall to catch up with Jayne Downing, to find out what the people of Par Bay did as part of Creative Civic Change. A poet herself, Jayne was a driving force behind ‘Poetry from Par Bay’ – a book created in 2020 as part of the Covid and Beyond Project with poetry from the local community. During lockdown, Jayne teamed up with George to create a Cross-Pollination Poetry Open Mic Night that, on Zoom, united poets from Pay Bay and Corby.
