In 2011 Solent Showcase began as a gallery in Southampton's emerging Cultural Quarter, proud to be shoulder-to-shoulder with great neighbours the Southampton City Art Gallery and later joined by the John Hansard Gallery and MAST. By 2017, Solent Showcase was dismantling the traditional concept of a gallery space, deconstructing unconscious bias and embracing social activism through creativity. In 2022 the Covid-19 pandemic forced the long-term closure of the building that housed our physical gallery space. This was the catalyst for fully implementing a new and innovative model of working.
As a result, Solent Showcase roams free: our future sees us moving to communities to listen, learn and help develop a collaborative reimagination and reinvention of their own localities and stories most important to them. We will be devising exciting creative projects, working at the intersect of culture, community and placemaking. A Place Based approach to social contribution means understanding the most important issues and opportunities within communities and using a person-centred, grassroots approach to meet the unique needs of people and collectively co-create projects to make the biggest impact both locally and nationally.
In addition, Solent Showcase will become an ENVIRONMENTAL BRIDGE by ensuring that our projects have environmental sustainability at the forefront of the planning and delivery process. We will produce Climate Impact Reports for our projects, encouraging transparency in the arts and reporting collective carbon emissions of each project.
The freedom to move to the heart of communities and respond to the hyper-local is an honour and a privilege for Solent Showcase and a natural progression built on years of direct experience. We are excited to explore how we might collectively play with the perceived boundaries between professional and amateur arts and artists, exploring the meaning of creativity on many levels and linking the local to national and international platforms.
Meet the team
Ellen Gillett
Freelance Exhibition Support and Development Officer
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