Nottingham Contemporary is home to the 1525 Collective, a youth programme for Nottingham’s young creatives and has welcomed members such as local MP Nadia Whittome. From networking, to skill-building, workshops and projects, the collective extends a helping hand to the city’s creative youths.
Nottingham Contemporary, located in the Lace Market, is a cultural hotspot for Nottingham’s local young creatives. The free art gallery has exhibited many interesting and insightful pieces of work from touring international artists, making it a popular spot for the city’s artistic youths. So, it may come as a surprise to many young people that there is a stress-free way to join the gallery’s community. That’s where the gallery’s 1525 collective comes in.
“Young people know their own experiences best and I think that they’re an oppressed class in society, and their voices are very rarely centered. They’re very actively decentered,” says Chan Fagan, Programmer for the free youth programme aimed at people aged 15-25. “The gallery wants to create opportunities and open up space for young people within the arts to offer something that they might not get, especially in education. I think there are a lot of things that are lacking and I find a lot of members come here in search of that thing that they’re not getting from art education.”
The purpose of the collective is to allow members to pick their own projects in order to build up both their skills and their confidence. From open mics held at the gallery’s cafe, Blend, to radio broadcasting, book binding workshops and more, members of the collective have full control and access to the resources provided by the gallery.
They aim to build up their member’s skills, whether that’s artistically, by collaborating in big group projects or holding their own workshops in the collective, or socially, building leadership skills and networking with other artists or people with similar interests.
“Originally it was a national program developed by the Tate, which was about creating more opportunities for young people to get into the arts and develop skills. It was first called Circuit, and then that became Collabor8, and once the gallery had developed that themselves and kept it on, it became 1525,” he says.
The process of joining the collective is quite an easy one. A short email to Chan and filling out a form linked on the collective’s Instagram page, will be received warmly and you’ll soon be asked to meet for an easy-going, quick chat, either online or in person. Unlike an interview, this process is more for them to get to know how to prepare for your arrival into the collective. Questions like - what can we do for you? What do you want to gain from us? How do you enjoy art? - are their main priority.
“That was a practice that the previous program runner used, which I also adopted,” Chan explains. “We just felt like having that opportunity for the young person to get a sense of what we actually do, and also to actually meet the person who will be leading the groups so I can get a sense of what their interest is, just helps everything go a bit more smoothly.”
They aim to build up their member’s skills, whether that’s artistically, by collaborating in big group projects or holding their own workshops in the collective, or socially, building leadership skills and networking with other artists or people with similar interests. One collective member, Sophie Lynn-Carney, says she joined the collective after graduating from her fine arts BA at Nottingham Trent University in order to meet other artists outside of the uni.
“I’ve made friends from the collective, which is always nice,” she says. “I’ve definitely been given opportunities I wouldn’t have done otherwise, like doing a radio show, which isn’t something I would have done before, or hosting a Nottingham Contemporary craft fair. That was a really good opportunity because it was the first time I’d been to a craft fair from such a big organisation, it really gave me a sense of how things were actually run.”
For Chan, creating opportunities for young people is their main purpose. “Having a space fit where young people can feel at home within the city and build those kinds of connections and develop the skills that they need and that will help build their futures,” they say. “Also, really importantly, lending power and using the resources of the gallery and offering those over to young people to have agency over, with the support from me, but primarily being led by them. That’s what I aim to do.”
Members of the collective are in charge of what projects they do and Chan’s job, they say, is to make those requests happen. Sophie’s request of doing a book binding workshop held by a member of the Contemporary staff was granted, and she particularly enjoyed participating in the collective’s 1230 talks, where they deliver a short tour and talks around the gallery exploring the themes of the current exhibition, as well as a whole collective project named, Lyceum.
Lyceum was a two part live talk series to a small audience designed to be a free, informal arts education space held in gallery zero of the contemporary, this was live broadcast and is set to be released on Spotify, and included a collective-made zine. The project included guest speakers and interviewees and discovered themes of non-mainstream arts education, creative failure and activism politics.
“The Lyceum was my first time interviewing someone and I had a lot of positive feedback from it. I learned a lot about alternative arts education too. Some people who had never come to any 1525 stuff before joined and watched too, which was interesting.”
In terms of the impact the collective makes on young creatives in the city, Sophie responded, “One of my friends joined 1525 before I ever knew them. They told me that the collective was part of the reason they did their art course, they wanted to do fine art because they felt inspired by their environment.” Sophie admitted herself that taking part in the collective has made her consider going on to do a masters degree.
For the future of the collective, Chan has said, “I think it would be amazing to offer more and take on bigger projects. I just want to be bigger and better. I think it would be great for their voices to just be a lot louder in Nottingham. It would be nicer to do some things that are outside the city as well. International, we’re going to be an international collective.”
To find out more about 1525 Collective head to the Nottingham Contemporary website or follow them on Instagram at the link below.
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