Culture Shift CEO speaks at Reducing Poverty in Hastings Action Plan Launch

This month, Culture Shift CEO Julia Roberts was asked to make a short keynote speech at an important event in Hastings to launch the Reducing Poverty in Hastings Action Plan. This plan has been led by Hastings Community Network Executive as a collaboration between many community organisations working in Hastings, including Culture Shift.

As poverty is an issue which impacts everyone who works in the community and so we thought we would share the speech here:

'I’m NOT here as an expert in poverty. Culture Shift is an arts organisation. What do we know about poverty? We are usually seen as the “soft, fluffy people”.

The truth is that I believe that the benefits of arts and culture, creative expression -both as audiences AND participants should NOT just be enjoyed by people who can afford tickets, materials, lessons and so on.

Of course, if you are living on a low income, probably paying for theatre tickets or art equipment or music lessons for example is going to be way down on your list of priorities. BUT there is a huge body of evidence that access to these things is GOOD for us in every way, in our physical and mental health, our education, our relationships and in our life chances. So, like everyone here today I am very invested in thinking about and - more importantly - doing something about tackling the impacts of poverty.

So, we all care. I don’t work in an organisation that directly works in tackling the crisis of poverty like housing or food but I am convinced that by working together we can support people through crisis, build their resilience and move them on to opportunities. Hope. A life beyond poverty. That’s exciting.

There is a little book that some of you may be aware of. It’s not a new book, it’s quite old in fact, called ‘Steal Like An Artist’. I often reference this book in my work and I think it’s relevant to our conversations today. Let’s be creative. Let’s notice where things make a difference, where there are gaps, where there is success and seeds of change and let’s think creatively about how we can work together to make this draft plan come to life. Let’s not spend time in analysing who or what is to blame for poverty, instead let’s build on good ideas, ‘steal like artists’ and make those ideas come to life in Hastings.

Artists are great at sometimes taking very unoriginal ideas and turning them into something new.

Artists are also in my experience very good at spending money but they are also very good at being creative even when money is short (believe me, arts budgets are usually amongst the first budgets to be cut!) So let’s not wait until there is a new money tree, let’s just get creative with what we already know, what we already have and what IS possible. I think that’s one of the strengths of this plan - that it is based on building on what is already established and happening in Hastings.

I wanted to share with you an example of a person who we have supported through crisis to resilience to opportunity. She has been caring for her husband for nearly 15 years after he suffered a brain injury. When she first came along to one of our sessions which are specifically for unpaid carers she described herself as broken. She was depressed. Lonely. Hopeless and living in poverty. Sadly, this is the experience of many people who give up work to care for a loved one.

She joined our project, connected with other carers and specialist advice services. Over months, she made new friends, became ‘crafty’ and started writing poems and recently she shared with us that she had turned the little spare room in her bungalow into her ‘studio’; somewhere she could go to be creative, making things, painting and writing. She had found herself again and found ways to enjoy her life, access support that she hadn’t even known was available to her. Now not only is she happier and healthier, but she has also set up her own local social group for carers which meets between the monthly sessions that we are commissioned to deliver. She is one of those people we should keep in our minds today.

We can’t alleviate poverty and the varied, complex causes of poverty but instead let’s focus on providing routes out of crisis for ‘broken’ people so that poverty doesn’t break them completely.'