We received Arts Council England’s Covid-19 emergency funding at the end of  April 2020 to keep Dover Arts Development going over the next months and deliver a programme with the intention of securing DAD’s future.

The project evidenced DAD’s collaborative, porous structure through direct experience and helped identify those who will safeguard DAD’s future, affirm our ongoing strategic & partnership work & continued delivery of collaborative projects.

Being unable to use our physical spaces (i.e. the residency space for visiting artists and the Dover Urban Room for salons & meetings), we moved to online spaces and developed and expanded our digital capability to deliver our programme.

We engaged locally and hyper locally in a series of ZOOM salons, bringing together artists, thinkers, residents and representatives of organisations for curated conversations about collaboration and ongoing partnership working, the role of a local arts organisation post Covid-19, climate change, a changing world, creative resilience and environmental responsibility.

We supported artists through challenging times by providing opportunities and outlets for their work and connection with other artists.

We worked with artist and recently appointed DAD director, Louisa Love, on DAD ARTISTS AT HOME. She invited artists who have worked with DAD over the last 12 years to share their lockdown activity in the form of videos, photos and writing to be featured and promoted via DAD’s website and social media platforms.

Alice Bryant came back to CHALKUP21. She  asked for contributions of photos, poems, videos featuring the CHALKUP21 Art & Architecture coastal trail from Folkestone to Deal for posting to the CHALKUP21 Facebook page and Instagram. Among other things encouraging people to share their photos and videos taken while on their “permitted daily exercise” along the trail on Instagram, using the hashtag #chalkup21 and tagged @dover_arts @chalkup21

We  commissioned 3 Dover based curators to curate 3 online exhibitions to be promoted through our website and social media platforms. Once venues open again there is potential for ‘September’  to be a physical exhibition.

Lonely Dover
Simon Bill

The Dover Art Network
Joseph Black

September
Nicolas Deshayes

We worked on an online DOVER PRINTFEST with Future Foundry & the Dover Studio Collective. The printfest was part of the 8^th Fete de l’Estampe. Working with Future Foundry enabled us to share resources and jointly develop and nurture talent. We ran 2 artist-led Zoom print workshops and showed work via #DoverPrintFest on Instagram.

Once again we delivered the annual family-friendly DOVER BIG DRAW with the Dover Big local.  The drawings were used to create a video and zine.