Calling all neighbours: MAC needs you!

Live in Birmingham?

Love speaking to people?

If so, your favourite local arts centre needs you!

We are looking for 10 confident and curious local residents to help shape the future of Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) as part of our MAC Neighbours programme - a community research project aiming to increase the number of people visiting MAC from local populations, who are currently underrepresented in our audiences.

It aims to do this by working with volunteer community researchers - you - to find out more about the experiences and views of our local communities, and what changes we might need to make so everyone can feel that MAC is a place for them. MAC Neighbours’ founding principles are:

1. If arts centres are for everyone, we must be proactive about engaging those who aren’t yet using them.
2. All of us have a role in defining what is meant by ‘arts and culture’.
3. When all of us are included, arts spaces become richer, more democratic and interesting for everyone.

If this is for you, we will be running monthly consultation sessions starting in October 2024 until March 2025 (TBC). Come to MAC to meet with our various departments and attend events to gather feedback and help shape the future of Midlands Arts Centre!

How to apply

Please officially register your interest by sending a quick response email to our Community Engagement team ([email protected]), stating why you are interested in taking part, along with the following details:

1. Full name

2. Preferred contact method (email/phone)

3. Age (must be 18 to apply)

4. Postcode

MAC Neighbours 2023

Recruited mostly through local flyering and in-person outreach in March 2023, the MAC Neighbours group were trained in community research by Birmingham City University Research Fellow Kusminder Chahal, and supported by Beatfreeks to co-design a research methodology. Their research, in the form of surveys, interviews and focus groups, was written up by Kusminder Chahal in summer 2023, and used to inform policy and programming at MAC.

Our community researchers help MAC to understand what positive changes we can make to further ensure MAC is a place where all our local neighbours feel they belong, and where transformative artistic and creative experiences are available to everyone.

MAC Neighbours is inspired by the USE-IT! community research model led by Birmingham City Council, and the name owes credit to Tate Neighbours, an collective of people local to Tate Modern brought together by artist Tania Bruguera and Counterpoints Arts in 2018.