BAS Prospectus

OUR VISION
Where there are artists and creatives, so a vibrant and attractive
environment grows and blossoms around them. This is not just fancy.
Time and again it’s proven – Temple Bar in Dublin, Manchester’s
Northern Quarter, East London, Fruit Market Hull. Or embedded within
single buildings – King William Dockyard in Devonport, Spike Island in
Bristol. Innovative regeneration initiatives and property developments
have increasingly recognised this, working with artists to create
spaces that become highly sought after as places to live, visit, work
and play. Magnets for new business, the retention of graduate talent
and a new dimension to tourism. What might otherwise become dead
environments are transformed into communities vivid with life.
As a part of Bath’s cultural infrastructure, we see the future as
being with our city, providing an accessible and welcoming creative
resource for its communities. If we can create the winning mix of
location, partners and stakeholders our goal is to secure long-term
and sustainable premises in which to build on our record of providing
affordable, well appointed accessible facilities for education, events
and exhibitions. In doing so we aim to contribute to both Bath’s
economic growth (through the retention of creative talent within the
city) and its reputation as a cultural centre (by ensuring Bath’s future
is as a city where art is made, not merely presented). To realise our
ambition we are interested in partnering with developers, landlords
and our colleagues in the cultural, education and wellbeing sectors to
create new, innovative and sustainable models for creative spaces fit
for purpose in the 21st century.
Our future is also implicit in our mission statement ‘To advance the
education of the public in the understanding and appreciation of the
arts’. In this spirit, we will develop our current model into a vibrant
place where the visitors, students, artists, designers and makers
encounter convergence between production, participation and
presentation – truly a place ‘where learning and practice meet’.