Craftspace

Craftspace has worked in collaboration with The Community Integration Partnership (CIP) for the past six years through a series of projects; Meeting of Hands and Hearts, Seeds of Change and New Growth.

CIP provide support and services to women seeking asylum, refugees and newly arrived women.

In a new phase we have secured funding from The Baring Foundation to set up a crafts social enterprise over a three year period. We created a new shared post of Crafts Social Enterprise Manager which is based at the CIP. Women and artists will work creatively together to develop limited edition artwork through a series of residencies. They will also learn business and administration skills to equip them to take up roles within a social enterprise in the future.

We began to recruit women by running a series of taster workshops in community centres across Birmingham. These were led by artists Melanie Tomlinson, Ruth Singer and Nicola Griffiths. These were funded by the Learning Revolution festival through Arts Council England.