Steve Connor from Creative Concern on his experience of talking to audiences about their hopes and ideas for HOME…
HOME is a new venue that’s bringing artists and audiences closer together and so it’s particularly fitting that it was over 150 audience members, artists, staff and city partners that helped us to shape its new name, identity and sense of purpose.
And what stood out during the course of our workshops and consultations?
First of all that there were a number of audience members who would, if they could, have actually got hitched to the arts institution that they’d grown to love. “If the Cornerhouse was a man, I’d marry him!” said one of our participants. There’s clear passion out there for the constituent institutions of HOME.
We also discovered that regardless of age, gender or background, there were so many emotions and feelings and opinions shared across different audience groups. “This is a second home to me,” said many of the workshop attendees; and this resonant and repeated refrain was what led us to the naming option that, in the end, was chosen.
Finally the juxtapositions and dualities that run through our audiences’ expectations and reflections are fascinating, powerful and hard-wired into HOME’s identity. As people who love the Cornerhouse and the Library Theatre Company we like to feel both comfortable but also challenged; warm but cool; edgy but known; local but global. We want everything and nothing; so Zen.
This why HOME will work and why HOME will astound. Peter Saville, the city’s Creative Director described the new name as ‘disarmingly casual’ because you will arrive, it will feel familiar and you will feel that you belong and then, as your guard is down, new experiences and new ideas will hit you, and you’ll be forced to think again about the world and your place in it.
“Make me think” they said, time and again.
Welcome HOME.
Steve Connor, CEO, Creative Concern