Community Arts North West: The Open Fund for Organisations

For:

Exodus Live

Based in the Northern Quarter of Manchester City Centre, we are an arts development organisation working in partnership with voluntary sector communities, agencies and artists to encourage, develop, create, produce and promote cultural programmes of work.

As an artist-led organisation, our main priority is to create access to cultural production for people that are excluded or on the fringe of mainstream cultural resources. CAN is essentially an organisation which is about action – working with people to turn ideas into reality.

For over 25 years our participatory arts programmes have helped to create a voice, expression and visibility for the many complex and diverse communities that make up Greater Manchester.

CAN strongly allies itself with the historical struggle of communities to create a better world. Using the arts in new ways to share and articulate hidden and specific histories, redefine and shape our social/cultural agendas, explore our complex identities and address the issues that are relevant to todays diverse communities of the North of England.

Increasingly, our work has focused on cross cultural collaborative production, bringing together a great mix of people, artists and communities – working creatively together in shared arenas – youth and community centres, church halls, mosques and temples, arts venues, studios, the streets and other urban spaces.