Portsmouth Creates, the CIC cultural catalyst company behind the hugely successful We Shine Portsmouth, is delighted to announce two new members joining its executive team - Louise Wilders and Claire Looney.

Launching on the weekend of Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th September, the market will take place in Southsea’s former Debenhams, now known as Handleys’ Corner.

Portsmouth Creates, on behalf of all Creative Industries in Portsmouth asked representatives from across the sector to complete a survey to establish the effects of Covid-19 on their practices and livelihood’s.

Our goal is to create a collaborative and accessible art project for the people of Portsmouth. The #CreateUpPompey Community Artist Colouring Book enables you to discover some of Portsmouth’s brilliant artists, designers and illustrators, whils participating yourself by sharing your own colourful versions of the artists work.

In December 2020 and early this year, we ran an extensive recruitment process to appoint a CEO “star!” for Portsmouth Creates CIC. Throughout the recruitment process, we were generously supported by Arts Council England. After considering some 45 excellent applications (!!), interviewed 9 wonderful candidates over the course of 2 days we settled on a collective decision, offered the job, got acceptance and were well underway co-ordinating stat dates, add an additional Kick Start-Non-Exec Directors, etc.

When we launched our search for a Portsmouth Creates CEO “star!”, we also launched a search for additional Kick Start None-Exec Board Directors – seeking a range of talents and experiences to complement the existing, start-up team. We had made the decision to wait for the new CEO to be fully on-board, so that we could appoint the Directors to complement their skill set, but in early March and with CEOs involvement (you’ll read more about that later), we felt that the momentum we were building required at least one extra Director on the board immediately.

In view of the current global pandemic and the profoundly uncertain toll it is taking on all aspects of life, Portsmouth Creates has made the sad, but very necessary decision to postpone ‘We Shine -Portsmouth’ street art and light festival until 2021. Collaboration is at the heart of our ethos and is key to producing a successful and impactful ‘We Shine - Portsmouth’ event for the city.  To be the truly community centric festival we had planned we need to be able to engage meaningfully and effectively with local creatives and community groups, or to collaborate with schools through interpersonal workshops, that would be so vital in building this light festival together.

In late December 2019 we supported the Portsmouth Culture Education Partnership (CEP) in a bid to the Better Lives Through Culture programme administered by Artswork. Working with the Portsmouth CEP & PCC Libraries and Archives Services, a bid was devised to unlock the opportunity to collaboratively deliver a variety of activity programmes for children and young people, especially those in hard to reach areas across the city, that would then feed into ‘We Shine- Portsmouth’ light festival.

December saw the start of our ‘Search for a Star’ campaign as we announced we are looking to appoint an inspirational Chief Executive Officer and a diverse board of volunteer Non-Executive Directors to share their experience and expertise and drive our vision forward. We want a fabulous team who share a passion and ambition to make Portsmouth a significant cultural player! Head to our careers page if you think you might be the star we are searching for.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who came and supported Portsmouth Creates at our official launch event! Crowds witnessed a captivating light installation, which was a creative culmination of local designers, Pompey Banana Club, Foursandeights, and local builder, video and sound artist Jez Stevens. On a building behind the main stage a series of unique Pompey Vernacular such as ‘Cushty’, ‘Dinlo’ and ‘Squinny’ took shape in a series of animations from re-branded household fruit labels to typography based optical illusions.