About Us
Chapel FM Arts Centre is a community charity based in Seacroft for 25 years and uses radio and other arts to create community dialogue, bring diverse groups together around defining long-term community projects, and reduce social tensions.
We provide unique training in for a diverse range of people in creating grassroots, community-led journalism, especially radio and podcasts that address crucial social issues.
Scroll down to read about our Artistic Resources, Values, and Methods...
Artistic Resources of Chapel FM
Chapel FM Radio & Arts Centre (a project of the charity Heads Together Productions) is a community arts venue in Seacroft in East Leeds, Yorkshire that was created by transforming a historic chapel into a unique, beautiful, and accessible building where a diverse range of people, projects, and organisations come together to:
>> Share and learn skills in creative expression, especially using digital storytelling, radio + sound-art, tech, writing, music, theatre, journalism, oral history, and other arts.
>> Organise and present performances, festivals, community forums, and other events using these art forms and skills.
>> Operate an arts radio station and podcast + audio-feature production company that creates work on a wide range of topics.
>> Host a variety of other projects and organisations that are excited to work together to explore inventive artistic ideas and strategies for social change.
>> Create connections with the wider world, linking people from our local community with people, projects, and organisations in other places, creating pathways for future progression.
>> Above all, Chapel FM is fiercely committed to using the arts to create situations where people different walks of life who might not normally interact can engage in dialogue, deep listening, and new ways of working together.
Artistic Values of Chapel FM
When designing and delivering artistic projects, we are committed to ensuring that our work adheres to the following 10 principles.
We make sure that that our projects:
1) Invite people to take part in a way that is open to all, allows for diverse voices to be heard, removes barriers, and encourages healthy vibrant debate.
2) Allow for artistic discovery and creation of high quality work that pushes the boundaries of what is possible.
3) Are financially, environmentally and ethically responsible.
4) Have potential to make community stronger, healthier, and more resilient.
5) Make good use of our unique venue and resources.
6) Can be meaningfully communicated to the people we want to connect with and reach those who might otherwise not have access to the arts.
7) Create room for improvisation and adapting to happy accidents and changing circumstances, cultivating skills of adaptation and flexibility.
8) Establish long-term partnerships and relationships that can grow and develop deeper meaning over time.
9) Build lasting archives that people will be able to access and creatively reuse in the future.
10) Open progression pathways for people taking part through education, employment, other creative projects.
Artistic Methods of Chapel FM
When designing and producing artistic projects, Chapel FM uses four unique methods:
>>> We have skills and experience in SEEKING STORIES and IDEAS about people and places that are not being heard but reveal important truths and insights about our community and world today. We build trust to work with people to bring these stories to wider awareness and impact using the following 3 methods.
>>> We bring inventive ways to help SHAPE these STORIES using many different art forms and technical tools such as radio production, music, creative writing, theatre. We also make use of our strong networks of local, national, and international artistic partners.
>>> We explore effective ways to SHARE STORIES with people from our community, providing a performance environment, using hosting skills, improvisation, publicity and getting the right kind of audience, ensuring that the story-originators’ intentions are respected and presented in their full humanistic complexity.
>>> We have wisdom and tools to SAVE these STORIES for the future, assembling accessible audio archives that next generations can connect with & creatively re-use, and assuring those who provided the stories that they will resonate and spark new projects and ideas in the near and distance future.