About Us
A new Creative People and Places project
OUTSIDE is a new Creative People and Places project, funded through Arts Council England. A participatory arts programme, OUTSIDE is led by people in the Staffordshire Moorlands working with professional artists. Together, they are co-curating arts and cultural activities that take place in, and are about life in, the rural and isolated landscape and settlements, villages and market towns of the Staffordshire Moorlands.
OUTSIDE’s mission is to make a lasting change in the way local communities take part in, make, and experience the arts. Creating extraordinary moments that encourage the residents of the Moorlands to come together for transformative experiences and celebrations of their place. We’ll explore what it means to live in a rural community, using culture as a lens to look at our way of life, we will reflect communities back to themselves and create visibility for those often unseen and unheard. Together we will reimagine what a confident, cohesive and collaborative rural community and regenerative future looks like. We will invest in and support an ambitious and vibrant creative ecology across the Moorlands helping to build capacity.
OUTSIDE is part of the Creative People and Places programme, supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. Thanks to National Lottery players, Creative People and Places is about more people taking the lead in choosing, creating and taking part in creative and cultural experiences in the places where they live.
Since 2012, there have been over 15 million engagements with the CPP programme and 90%* of people who participate in CPP weren’t previously engaging regularly with creativity and culture.
Find out more about each project, the difference the programme has made and our learning >
* Average across 3 Audience Finder National Reports 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24