Unboxing the future

Since March, UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, one of the biggest investments in cultural programming in recent years, has been reaching into every corner of the UK. In just nine months, it's had an audience of over 18 million, while supporting cross-sector collaboration, more than 6,000 jobs, and creating skills development opportunities for young and emerging creatives. 

At the same time, 1.7 million children, young people and families have taken part in learning and participation activities. 

UNBOXED was designed to support the creation and presentation of new, ambitious creative work rooted in pioneering collaboration across science, tech, engineering, maths and art in a way not done at this scale before. 

Access, representation and the platforming of new and emerging talent were hardwired into the process from the start in the design of the open call for new creative teams. It is a new type of cultural festival, decentralised and pluralistic, embracing technology as a core tool and particularly focused on engaging new audiences in places where this ‘sort of thing’ never happens. 

Not the festival of Brexit

UNBOXED was never about Brexit. Take a proper look at the ten commissions that make up the creative programme and this is abundantly clear. It is, however, about the UK - the four nations - and most importantly the people who choose to call these islands home.

At its heart, UNBOXED is about how working together we must be able to find the tools or language to begin thinking optimistically the future, something explored through each commission and through the Collective Futures being led by our research partners the RSA.

Implicit in some of the discourse seems to be a fear that this project might seek to impose a top-down, easily articulated, simplistic and commodified sense of national identity. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

People and place

A lesson from place-based programming, whether Cities or London Boroughs of Culture, is that places cannot and should not be curated. Developers love the term ‘placemaking’, but I believe places are already made. They are also in constant flux, a cacophony of different communities co-existing in all their messy glory. What happens when it isn’t a borough or a city, but across the entirety of four nations? Perhaps the job of a project like UNBOXED is to dial that noise up.

The initial brief asked creative teams to work in ‘places and spaces across the UK, real, virtual or both’, has resulted in work drawn from and created with communities from over 107 different locations, many outside major urban centres, as well as specifically for online and broadcast.

About Us, which opened the live programme back in March in Paisley, as well as using state of the art technology to present ideas about science, biology, and history, is firmly rooted in people and place, involving local choirs and schoolchildren's poetry. One of the singers commented: "I would like to say thank you for giving me and the other members of the choir this opportunity of a lifetime. I have had a blast. To sing with choir members from around the UK, has been a brilliant experience, one I will never forget."

Dandelion in Scotland has involved hundreds of thousands of people for a Scotland-wide food growing and sharing programme that seeks to inspire future generations. About GALWAD, a major investment in Wales' creative sector, one of the 16-strong writing team said: “To be part of something so inclusive, challenging and important that was rooted in Wales but spoke to the world, was a real privilege.”

Investing in creativity

Another key point that seems to have been missed is the significant investment in creative talent, through jobs, paid opportunities for young people and organisations able to develop major projects.

StoryTrails worked with fifty emerging creatives drawn from fifteen locations across the UK, upskilling them in AR/VR production techniques and mentoring them to uncover the often hidden or marginalised stories of their hometowns. It has also left the technology behind at local libraries, so that visitors can continue to explore these stories with the help of librarians newly trained in how to use it.

The likes of Nerve Centre (creative lead for Our Place in Space), Trigger (PoliNations) and Walk the Plank (Green Space Dark Skies) have been able to develop extraordinary work and forge new partnerships, in the UK and internationally. Tour de Moon, which went to towns and cities across England, has invested in hundreds of young and emerging, artists, designers, filmmakers and other creatives, often from under-represented backgrounds.

Testing new ideas, SEE MONSTER – a world first - offers a blueprint for the reuse of major structures while creating a temporary attraction for Weston-super-Mare that attracted hundreds of thousands of people and boosted the local economy. Similarly, immersive artwork Dreamachine is not only a revolutionary audience experience, but also the catalyst for a major neuroscience research study investigating the individuality of the human mind.

Wildly ambitious

This is all brand new, wildly ambitious work from teams that met for the first time at the height of the pandemic with a blank sheet of paper and a shared belief in the possibilities of new collaboration. UNBOXED armed them with funding at a time when sectors had been devastated, and here we are, two years on, reflecting on a truly four nation project that has successfully worked with creatives and communities right across the UK.

Whatever people feared UNBOXED could have been - and is perceived to be by people who have not experienced it - it wasn’t, and it isn't. It's like nothing else before and there are thousands of people who should be proud at achieving something remarkable. 

UNBOXED is a public statement about the value of creativity and the power of collaboration, and I believe the true legacy and impact of this innovative, brave and unique process and programme will go on to be felt here and abroad in the years to come. 

Sam Hunt is Programme Director at UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK.
@unboxed2022 
www.unboxed2022.uk/

More articles from UNBOXED are available to read here.