An introduction to the UK National Arts Strategies (NAS) Creative Community Fellowship and Culture Card

Celine Elliott is Cornwall Museums Partnership’s Engagement Lead. Having joined in 2019, Celine leads our programme of engagement support for museums in Cornwall and Scilly. Having gained experience working with collections in the north, returning to Cornwall has allowed Celine to focus her attention on the diverse and inspirational organisations which make up the museum community in the region.

This year, Celine was awarded an inaugural UK National Arts Strategies (NAS) Creative Community Fellowship.

Please keep reading for more from Celine on this fantastic achievement and how it will link to the current projects she is working on within Cornwall Museums Partnership.

As the Engagement Lead for CMP I work on a variety of strategic partnerships and offer support and develop opportunities for local museums, strengthening connections with local communities.

This year I was honoured to be awarded an inaugural UK National Arts Strategies (NAS) Creative Community Fellowship. Funded by Arts Council England and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, this incredible opportunity was previously only available in the United States. The programme provides the chance to develop a network of likeminded creative leaders across the country while applying design-thinking to a project you are working on.

For me, this will offer me the chance to look at the next steps of the Culture Card project. CMP and partner museums have been working together with Carefree Cornwall – a charity who support children in care and care leavers – to create free opportunities for Care Leavers to explore collections, their own creative potential and further embed museums as welcoming spaces for young people from this demographic. Funded throughout 2020 by Cornwall Council, coordinated by Zoe Burkett at Penlee House Gallery and Museum with expert artistic input from Emma Saffy Wilson, the project has also offered a Youth Work Support Apprenticeship and – as a result of Covid-19 – a new, digital element including a podcast exploring the experiences of Care Leavers.

My background in Youth and Community work means this is close to the origins of my museum practice: rights-based and focused on cultural democracy. Developing this project to its full potential, with the support of the NAS Creative Community Fellowship, is a privilege. The Culture Card project is currently in the running for a national award in the 2020 National Leaving Care Benchmarking Forum and I hope that we can begin to see the approach pioneered by Carefree, CMP and Cornish museums adopted by other cultural institutions in the UK.

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-Celine Elliott

Celine works Monday – Friday and can be reached at celine@cornwallmuseumspartnership.org.uk