ODAC LAUNCHES VISION & STRATEGY FOR 2024-2029
Euston - the communities and the cityscape - is ODAC’s inspiration, collaborator and stage.
As the next stage in ODAC’s ongoing transformation, we’re delighted to have launched a new vision and strategy for the next five years. It builds on the spirit of our history, the urgent realities of now, and the need to imagine new futures for a neighbourhood and city in flux.
Many of you will know our story: at some slightly vague point in the mid-1970s, the Victorian Diorama building overlooking Regent’s Park was occupied by collectives of artists, who slowly made the grand building, which was built to house Louis Daguerre’s ‘Diorama’ painting-and-light-based early cinema experience into a space for the arts again. Born out of an era of DIY culture and opportunity, they made it into a vibrant destination for art, craft, theatre, circus, concerts, raves and more. Formalised as a charity in 1981, by ‘87, Diorama Arts proudly proclaimed to be ‘Britain’s Largest Independent Arts Centre’.
Our heritage is in artistic process; it’s in artists doing things for themselves and revitalising under-used spaces and making the city theirs; it’s in connecting art to location and community; and it’s always been in the Regent’s Park ward of the borough of Camden.
Since we reopened in June 2021, we find ourselves steadfast in central London at a time when artists and arts creation are being forced ever-outwards to the peripheries; a risk-averse attitude to cultural programming prevailing nationally; wealth inequality widening in our society; and in a diverse community where our neighbours’ basic needs are not always covered.
Coming out of hibernation under new leadership, we began the task of reimagining a role for this charity. We started by meeting as many local groups as possible, saying ‘yes’ as much as possible, listening as much as possible, and seeing what ODAC could help enable. Some of those groups, like Community Champions Regent's Park (led by Fitzrovia Youth In Action), have become key collaborators on multiple projects.
At the beginning of 2022, we put in place an interim vision, mission, values, and some guiding questions to explore through action during the year ahead. We made exploration one of our values, tried things out, built new collaborations, tested what was needed and saw how things went and what worked… We can really say that this strategic plan for the next five years is a framework that has been developed through action. It articulates and sharpens our ambition, but we hope it doesn’t feel entirely new.
Our new 2024-2029 Strategic Plan was developed during the second half of last year, by staff and trustees, attempting to incorporate all that we have learnt from working in this community, urban context, and artistic ecology - exploring how ODAC can be useful, and impactful.
Being based in this Euston area means that we're working in central London; in the Knowledge Quarter; in a large residential local community with significant social challenges; in an area with major urban developments; in the impact zone of HS2; and in a business district. And it's in this context that we have built our strategies.
As a creation centre, we don’t have a theatre and so we don’t always meet the audiences of the work that is made in our spaces. So as we’ve expanded our community role in the Regent’s Park area, we have begun to find our ‘audience’, and, we believe, a useful civic role.
Our work is about the role of the artist in society, and the role of an arts creation centre in a community. Our new vision is to catalyse artistic creation and collaboration to transform our society and city.
And our mission is about our role in that: to be a vibrant, nurturing centre where artists and residents come together to make the change they need; serving as a springboard for artistic creation and community action, with the neighbourhood and cityscape of Euston as our inspiration, collaborator and stage.
We’re visualising our activity and focus as a venn diagram. The three strands of activity are:
SPACE TO CREATE
Space for the live arts, creative industries and local communities to make, explore and collaborate.
RESIDENT PARTICIPATION
Inclusive, participatory projects co-created with residents of Regent’s Park ward and wider Camden.
ARTISTIC EXPLORATION
Interdisciplinary artistic support and commissioning, as part of London’s Knowledge Quarter.
And then over those, we add another layer of focus on CIVIC & SOCIAL ACTION
Using the arts as our tool to contribute to the health, wellbeing and cohesion of our communities, and the development of the environments in which we are located.
Overall we are aiming to lead and be characterised by the central point of intersection between our activity and focus: where ARTISTIC EXPLORATION with RESIDENT PARTICIPATION in SPACE TO CREATE makes impactful CIVIC & SOCIAL ACTION.
There’ll always be some elements of our work that operate in just one or two of the areas of overlap, but that star in the centre is the sweet spot for where ODAC is putting our resources in the next five years, working towards our vision.
To launch this new Strategy and share it with our local community, partners and stakeholders, we held a breakfast presentation on 27th February 2024. The room was filled with artists, arts organisations, local Regent’s Park ward charities, community group leaders, councilors, funders, donors, officers from multiple council departments, academics and university partners, urban planners, property developers and contractors, designers, architects, Regent’s Place colleagues, businesses. We feel the group that gathered really reiterated the civic role that we have built here.
Our new artistic policy is that we collaborate with artists who have a vision of the world they want to be part of, and who are finding new ways to make it together. We’re lucky to have interdisciplinary partners who want to make a new world with us and we’re excited for what we can achieve.
If you are interested to read ODAC’s full Strategic Plan, please write to CEO Daniel Pitt.
