Touchstones awarded Art Fund Reimagine grant to support Side-by-Side
Touchstones, part of Your Trust, has been awarded funding through Art Fund’s Reimagine grants programme to support the development of a major summer event to take place in Rochdale town centre in 2025.
Art Fund has awarded £1million to museums and galleries across the UK reliant on local authority support, and this latest round of the Reimagine programme will support museums including Touchstones to reimagine their approach to partnerships.
Side-by-Side is the next iteration of artist Harry Meadley’s 2022 project Free-for-All, which saw Touchstones’ spaces become available to the public to programme whatever they wanted. As Touchstones is currently closed for redevelopment, Side-by-Side will instead take place in a temporary structure in the town centre, developed and curated by community organisations, artists, the people of Rochdale and Touchstones’ Creative Voices group.
The project aims to empower local community members, groups and creatives to explore what is possible when an art gallery and museum takes risks and lets go. Taking place over a week in August 2025, events will include exhibitions, dance, poetry, music, family fun and so much more.
Artist Harry Meadley, Creative Lead on Side-by-Side said: “We might have to accept that the aspirations for what the gallery needs to be and who it needs to serve is unachievable alone. We need help from the friends we already have, and to extend that friendship as far as possible, particularly in attempting to reach those who feel most isolated and alone. Who are the hardest to reach and the least likely to engage? Can we start with the biggest challenges? And what even are they? There is clearly not space or resource enough to include everyone, but can we make sure not to exclude anyone?”
Art Fund’s Reimagine grants programme has been prioritised to support local authority-reliant museums and galleries in response to Art Fund’s Museum Directors Survey 2024 and other pieces of research revealing the significant challenges currently facing museums and galleries.
Launched in 2020, the Reimagine programme is designed to inspire creativity and increase stability and resilience in museums. It supports organisations to develop or refresh their work in response to their current situation.
Touchstones’ Community & Engagement Manager Bryan Beresford said: “We’re delighted to have been awarded the Reimagine Grant from Art Fund to continue the development of Side-by-Side. Whilst Touchstones has been closed we’ve been working closely with Creative Lead Harry Meadley and with local communities to make this a reality. We’re so excited for the new creative collaborations and opportunities that will blossom in the coming months helping us to make more inclusive and relevant work with and for local people.”
Reimagine grants are funded by Art Fund and made possible with support from The Headley Trust, alongside other generous trusts and supporters of the Making Connections campaign. Find out more about the Reimagine programme here.
More details about Side-by-Side, including how people can get involved, will be announced over the coming months.