Creative Medway 2025 Priorities Update!

Blog

Every year, Creative Medway brings Medway’s cultural community together to set new focuses for the year ahead. This year we are focusing on:

• Let’s talk money: economic sustainability and business models across the creative sector
• Engaging young people in the work of Creative Medway and the wider creative community
• Supporting cultural sector diversity in Medway.

For the first time the sector and community representatives on the Creative Medway Cultural Compact are making public their commitments to supporting these focusses over the coming months. 

What is the Creative Medway Cultural Compact?

Creative Medway runs Medway’s Cultural Compact, a cross-sector partnership to embed creative solutions to place-based challenges and put culture and creativity at the centre of life in Medway for the benefit of everyone who lives here. 

The Creative Medway Cultural Compact brings together elected representatives of our cultural community (the Creative Medway Board) with representatives of Medway’s diverse communities, young people, and members of other sectors including:

• Higher and further education
• Under 18 education
• The health sector
• The business sector
• The voluntary sector
• The public sector

Our Compact is one of a growing number of Cultural Compacts setup across England in the model developed by Arts Council England. It has been involved in developing and supporting initiatives such as the Medway Change Makers cultural volunteering programme and Medway’s Creative Health Place Partnership.  You can read more about the Creative Medway model here.

Sector and Community Representatives’ focusses for the year

Meet the Community and Sector Representatives on the Creative Medway Compact and find out how they will be supporting the work of the cultural sector this year.

Kelly Webb – Health Sector Champion
Programme Manager, Medway and Swale Health and Care Partnership

This year Kelly will be:

• Bringing together a new partnership agreement between the health and culture sectors in the model of the existing partnership agreement between the voluntary and health sectors.
• Supporting the development and roll out of new approaches to creative health as part of and beyond the Creative Health Place Partnership programme.
• Involving the creative sector in conversations about health and social regeneration in Medway.

Blessing Enakimio – Business Sector Champion
CEO, BleGlobal

This year Blessing will be:

• Chairing the working group focussed on the economic sustainability focus on behalf of Creative Medway.
• Running hands-on expert-led business workshops to support the sector to develop business skills, commercialise their offer and grow additional funding streams.
• Exploring a business mentoring programme for the culture sector.
• Reviewing and evaluating the work around business sustainability.

Nancy Hirst – Under 18 Education Sector Champion
Co-Chair, Medway Cultural Education Partnership

This year Nancy will be:

• Strengthening the connection between the Medway Cultural Education Partnership and Creative Medway through regular updates and joint activity planning.
• Supporting the Creative Medway working group focussed on growing opportunities for young people within the sector, in particular through creating a resource/toolkit to help the sector understand how young people find out about activities and how best to promote activities to young people.

Lisa Michalowicz – Voluntary Sector Champion
Volunteering and Comms Officer, Medway Voluntary Action (MVA)

This year Lisa will be:

• Developing opportunities for youth volunteering by:
  – bringing the voluntary sector together with young people to establish more meaningful, and easier access routes into volunteering,
  – developing an online resource to support the sector to build youth volunteering into existing programmes,
  – creating a new area for young people on Medway Volunteer Network’s Individuals Volunteering Support website.
• Connecting the work of the Creative Medway Cultural Compact with the work of the voluntary sector in Medway via community outreach events, regular VCS sector news and media platforms, MVA’s online events calendar and through networks MVA supports including the VCS Leaders Network, Volunteer Manager Support Network, Medway Faith Leaders Network and MVA Funding Club.
• Deepening communications cross-over between the voluntary and creative sectors through creative sector articles in MVA’s  monthly newsletter, volunteer profiles in monthly volunteer news bulletins and including creative volunteering opportunities in MVA’s top 10 volunteer opportunities in Medway emails.

Cllr Nina Gurung – Public Sector / Local Authority Champion
Portfolio Holder for Heritage, Culture and Leisure, Medway Council

This year Nina will be:

• Strengthening the ways in which Medway Council and Creative Medway work together to promote Medway as a creative power-house and to grow and to promote the reputation of Medway’s cultural community. This will include advocating for culture with cabinet colleagues and in cabinet decision making.
• Establishing four vibrant creative quarters in Chatham drawing on best practice in culture-led placemaking from across the country and coordinating a series of launch moments over the year to highlight inward investment opportunities which will benefit culture.
• Working with Creative Medway to map priority projects over the next 3 years in order to tap into the £270 million Arts Everywhere funding announced by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. 
• Forging strong relationships with media partners to promote creative sector activities and achievements.
• Actively supporting and championing diversity and inclusivity across the sector and in particular at sector events.
• Accessioning Creative Medway’s annual summary of achievements into Medway Archives.

Amelia Van Neirek – Youth Champion
Cabinet Member, Medway Youth Council

This year Amelia will be:

• Co-Chairing the Creative Medway working group focussed on opportunities for young people within the cultural sector.
• Feeding in the voice of local young people to Creative Medway Compact discussions and decision making, drawing on Medway Youth Council’s annual youth voice event. 
• Supporting Creative Medway to run youth-friendly cultural community events.

Beth James – Diverse Communities Champion
Kent & Medway Disibility Arts Network and Artistic Director, Square Pegs Arts

This year Beth will be:

• Organising and delivering an event as part of Elevate 2025 Conference to launch the Medway Access Pledge for use by venues and events across wider Kent.
• Organising and delivering an event as part of Elevate 2025 Conference for disabled artists in Medway.
• Advocating for access, equity and inclusion as part of Creative Medway’s delivery of its three annual priorities, and supporting the working group focussed on creative sector diversity.
• Advocating broadly for access, equity and inclusion across Medway’s creative sector in collaboration with the Disability Arts Network.