Future Views for Flow
We in Flow UK are going through a nicely productive patch, working on some projects that really help us live up to our name – getting us into a state of flow. As well as longer term projects such as the National Maritime Museum’s Travellers’ Tails, the Ashmolean Museum’s community projects around their Manet acquisition, and running the Cultural Education Challenge project called Cultivate, we also have some new projects.
We’re helping the Science Museum develop an activity programme for their new Medicine Galleries, including provision for families, schools, hard-to-reach audiences and people with dementia. We’re evaluating a programme called Arts-Friendly Archives, led by playwright Jefny Ashcroft, working with archives in the West Midlands. We’re evaluating the contemporary environmental art projects, and the organisational development, of the arts organisation Invisible Dust.
One new project that is really exciting is called Future Views. The three ACE bridge organisations Royal Opera House, Artswork and Festival Bridge have commissioned us to carry out a process to imagine the next generation of cultural learning. Working with young people, Local Cultural Education Partnerships and experts in cultural, digital and educational futures, we are using a Speculative Design approach in a series of online and real-world discussions. This will result in a Toolkit that any local cultural education partnership can use to think about the future and come up with a Route Map to 2036. There will soon be a website and Twitter feed about the project, so watch this space.