'Making the Connections’ is a regional network based upon the principles of participatory action research (PAR) and participatory arts (PA). The network was launched at the Y Theatre in Leicester in April 2006 and funding supported the network until January 2009. The network examined the transformative role of arts and culture in fostering integration and belonging for new arrivals in the East Midlands and built upon the considerable work of regional community arts organisations, Arts Council East Midlands, academics in regional Universities, artists, practitioners, policy makers and diasporic communities by creating a programme of workshops and seminars to:
enhance the lives of recent arrivals in the East Midlands;
stimulate high-quality inter-disciplinary research and the production of art works ;
facilitate connection, communication and feed into public policy and
contribute to public awareness of the issues facing new arrivals.
The launch event was supported by the Arts Council East Midlands. We identified the potential for collaboration between community arts, academics, policy makers and those working with newly-arrived migrants, with a view to identifying themes and areas in the East Midlands to act as focus for 10 workshops over the next 24 months led by stakeholders across the voluntary, statutory, university and community arts sector. Funding for workshops/seminars was distributed to event organisers. Seminars and workshops focused on a range of issues: destitution; therapeutic arts;women and migration; employability and the Life CV; unaccompanied young people; migrant workers in rural areas; what is art?; inter-cultural education; telling tales:migration, identity and the postcolonial. An end of programme conference was held at Loughborough University in July 3/4th 2008. A group emerged from this work that successfully bid for Knowledge Transfer funding from the AHRC that focused upon what Integration and Belonging means for new arrival communities and artists. The latter project is called 'Beyond Borders:Making Connections'.