Carol Crowe email me here
Background After completing, with honours, the first ever Community Arts course at Bradford Art School in 1974, I worked there with Albert Hunt as a performer and lecturer until 1981. The diverse programme of events, courses and activities provided a challenging learning environment. The department worked with visiting artists and performers, fine art students, alternative theatre companies, in service training teachers, day release nurses and mechanics, young unemployed people and adult education tutors. I moved to Nottingham in 1981. I began to work with Nottingham Community Arts Centre as a volunteer on the management group and became chair 1982-1987. I worked to support the centre as it undertook a period of considerable challenge and change, emerging as the leading project of its kind in the region. I earned my living with commercial artwork. At this time I was a founder member of the feminist arts group Visible Women, who developed a collective working practice. I co-directed the Nottingham Women's Festival for two years. I was a management group member for the National Artists Association, an executive board member for the National Campaign for the Arts and a panel member for East Midlands Arts. Between 1988 and 1995 medical health problems prevented me from working. In 1996 I was a founder member of Lady Bay Open Studios, which was formed to open studios, workshops, homes and gardens for visitors to meet artists in a friendly neighbourhood setting. It grew to be a successful annual weekend event, with over 1,500 visitors a year; about 45 artists take part annually, totalling over 150 exhibitions of work so far. It offers workshops, activities, a cafe and live music, supported by about 50 voluntary helpers. My role was organising and fundraising, developing relationships in the community, and establishing the event and the group in a stable framework. After ten years, I stood down and new group members are taking the event in their hands. My practice is in project development where artists engage in new ways of working with voluntary and professional partnerships. Currently I am doing an MA, Collaboration in Creative Practice, at Nottingham Trent University, which will conclude in December 2006.
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Community Arts - Practice and Development
I have always adopted an approach where commitment to the aim of the activity leads individuals to develop fresh thinking and new skills, and organisations to engage with new relationships and horizons. By enabling artists, participants and providers to review their part in arts activity critically, I work to achieve sustained benefits and to identify opportunities for experiment. My central principle is to work with participants in a project as equal partners; different skills, interests and needs are part of the work but do not define status. As an individual, in groups, and with organisations and education bodies, my experience includes paid and voluntary activity, as participant and artist in local or issue-based work, and in management and executive roles for city, regional and national arts organisations. Skills My creative skills began in traditional visual media and theatre; they grew to include applied arts and performance, and are now concerned with developing digital media skills. My organisational skills include the development and management of projects, groups, organisations and budgets, with voluntary and professional partners. My teaching experience is both formal and informal, with all ages, abilities and mixed groups, in work ranging from degree courses to playgroups. 
I am age 55, married with two sons, age 25 and 16; I am a non-driver, a sometime gardener and a novice learner of Japanese. I am a partner with my husband, Francois, in arts consultancy Matarasso and Crowe.
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