King Street Arts (Lancaster) CIC (KSA) is an arts organisation based in Lancaster. Its city centre building is home to artist studios, a small gallery, and workshop space; but our work reaches far beyond these walls. The organisation has been established for seven years and a CIC since November 2022, but only trading as such from 31st March 2023. KSA focuses on the visual arts to offer a range of services to local communities interested in exploring the value of arts in everyday life. The organisations two founders and directors, Roy Smith and Kath McDonald, are both artists and hold the belief, through their own lived experience, that engaging with creativity has the capability to transform lives in a positive and health-giving way. Our mission is to ensure that the opportunities we create are high quality, accessible and as equitable to our communities as we can possibly make them; both in our home base at 5a King Street and other locations in and around Lancaster.
Our strap line: Connect Share Create, sums up our mission: we want to connect people with creativity, connect people with art opportunities, connect people with the experience of art: making, seeing, showing and sharing, connect with the health and sense of wellbeing that can come from engaging with creative activity, both as spectator and as a participant. We want to share art and creativity with people, to offer the opportunity to see and engage with art at many levels, bring people together to share experiences and skills and create the opportunities to learn from each other both through seeing and doing. We want to create opportunities for people to create their own art, to encourage artists to grow their art practice, to allow space for creative conversations. Everything we do leaves some kind of trace in the world: if we create with intention that trace will say something about us as an individual but also something about humanity and our connection to the world.
Therefore:
The workshops we offer have a focus on developing, through creativity, a connection with ourselves and the world around us. A playful and exploratory approach helps to build and develop skills and an understanding of the materials and processes of art making.
And our Associate Artist Group creates the opportunity for artists to come together for peer-to-peer support with professional and exhibition opportunities as part of the programme of activities we co-ordinate for the group.
