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City Arts Nottingham is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a year-long programme of commissions, celebrations and events, including exhibitions and workshops.

Festivities began in September 2017, and so far, have included a 40 Years of City Arts exhibition, a Young Producers Takeover, a giant ruby-coloured phoenix puppet in the Nottingham Puppet Festival and a Box of Delights exhibition where 40 artists were invited to create a magical world inside a cardboard box. Supported by the Garfield Weston Foundation, City Arts has also collaborated with Nottingham Writers’ Studio for a competition on the theme of 40.

Regularly funded by Arts Council England, City Arts’ work focuses on making art and culture accessible to all people in Nottinghamshire and beyond.  Through visual arts, performance and the written word, they will make sure audience members who may find it challenging to take part are included. They recently created a troupe for Nottingham Carnival, featuring mobility scooter floats for older and disabled people, and produced opening and closing ceremonies for the Cerebral Palsy World Games. They have also hosted exhibitions for artists with mental health issues and lead the flagship arts and older people programme Imagine, which takes art and artists into Nottingham Care Homes.

Founded as Nottingham Community Arts & Crafts Centre in September 1977, the centre has gone from offering local people access to screen printing equipment and photography darkrooms, to creating pioneering projects working with older people in care homes and engaging with communities throughout Nottinghamshire.

City Arts has also worked with Nottingham City Council to create two new city-wide projects - Words of Wisdom and Classical Fusion, which challenged perceptions of ageing and dementia using literature, music, dance and digital art. This was funded by Arts Council England and the Baring Foundation through the National Lottery’s Celebrating Age programme.

This summer as part of the 40th celebrations, the centre will join up with Nottingham’s Young Poet Laureate, Georgina Wilding, and local graffiti artist Kid30 and a group of young refugee and asylum seekers. Together they will turn their stories into an interactive artwork for the window of the City Arts building to mark the 40th anniversary.

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