What is Percent for Art?
Our Percent for Art Team are based in our Community Engagement Team and work across all areas of Bolton. Members of the team work with residents, community groups, partners and other community stakeholders to develop socially engaged arts projects that help to improve our communities and benefit customers.
We commission appropriate artists or arts organisations, to work with the local community, and we manage the project from start to finish. The Percent for Art service actively encourages individuals and community groups to get involved in schemes that can offer creative solutions to neighbourhood issues.
Ideas for arts projects can come from our neighbourhood teams and they will focus on specific neighbourhood priorities or be developed through conversations with community groups, partner organisations or other community stakeholders. Sometimes local arts projects are developed through wider Greater Manchester, regional or national networks or funding.
Our service also offers advice and guidance to our partners with regard to developing arts projects involving other social housing customers across Bolton. We have also been commissioned by partners to project manage a number of community arts and public / environmental art projects in Bolton.
Projects can be in any medium including visual arts, performance, music, crafts, digital art and film. They can take the form of arts based consultation, skills and confidence building projects, arts in health and wellbeing work, festivals and celebratory arts, as well as streetscaping and environmental arts projects designed to enhance the physical environment.
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2023 Giving Little Lever tenants a blooming good view
As part of our Lever Gardens Court new build development in Little Lever our colleagues consulted with existing residents living around the Lever Gardens Court construction site who wanted something to improve the view of the construction site protective fence around their homes. Among some of the suggestions were planting and planters, but the site’s steep gradient called for a more bespoke solution. Working with the rich skills of volunteers at our supported Men in Sheds Projects at Willow Hey Community Project and Breightmet Men in Sheds along with a Bolton at Home Arts Officer, Project Officer, and a Peer Navigator the giant flower relief art works were created. Inspired by the residents favourite flowers, requests for a dark coloured rose and various flower varieties photographed on a trip to RHS Bridgewater the Women of Willow Hey helped paint the temporary public art works into life like flowers which the Men in Sheds members then installed.
The residents had heard about Willow Hey Community Project and the giant flowers they had at their entrance and asked their Men in Sheds if they could create giant flowers. The project was an opportunity for two or our Men in Sheds project to work together on a large scale project for the benefit of elderly Bolton at Home residents living in another area of Bolton. The co-production approach flourished further by involving the Women of Willow Hey group to add the painted final touches to the art works. Caddick Construction who have built the Extra Care Scheme at Lever Court were so inspired by the art works that when the protective fence was removed they created a much better fence so the flowers could be reattached. It’s been a much-welcomed feature for residents.