Exchange - East Sussex Arts Education Network

We are Exchange - East Sussex Arts Education Network. 

We believe every child and young person, regardless of background, deserves access to high quality arts education that nurtures creativity, wellbeing and future opportunities.

Our Vision is of a thriving East Sussex where every child and young person has equitable access to high-quality arts and cultural education that nurtures their creativity, confidence, and lifelong learning. 

Our Mission is to help rectify the balance of diminishing cultural resources in schools. We do this by bringing together schools, cultural organisations and artists in meaningful, lasting partnerships, creating sustainable projects that embed culture into the everyday lives of young people in East Sussex. 

Our Values:

• Inclusion: Ensuring equitable access to arts education for all children and young people regardless of background
• Collaboration: Building strong partnerships between schools, artists, and cultural organisations
• Excellence: Maintaining high standards in artistic practice and educational delivery
• Youth Voice: Centring young people's needs, perspectives, and creative expression
• Community: Strengthening connections between arts, education, and local communities

Why we are crowdfunding

We are raising funds to help cover a series of these initial projects and core costs. Your donations will allow our new team of staff to hit the ground running, enabling us to offer creative workshops for children while also working on applying and securing long-term project funding.

We have a series of ambitious, exciting new projects in development, which focus on using creative projects to grow confidence, connection and skills in students who have additional needs and those that are most at risk of non-attendance. Our plan is to launch during the 2026/7 school year, but we need your help to make that happen.

How your donations will be used

The funding landscape is challenging, and in particular, core funding for the day to day operations of a charity can be especially hard to secure through grants. Alongside our creative offers for children, we need a secure foundation to keep the charity running smoothly while we develop larger, project-specific funding bids during this pivotal stage of our development. 

Your donations, whether you decide to donate a one off payment, or a recurring monthly donation, will help: 

• Creative workshop places for children
• Training for artists to work inclusively with children
• Network development including quarterly network events across three areas of East Sussex
• Part time staff to ensure the projects run smoothly
• Project development, including time to research and plan funding applications, develop and gather evaluation and impact measurements, and build partnerships with cultural organisations. 
• Essential software, equipment and communications

Donation breakdown: 

£10 pays for materials for a creative workshop

£25 pays for a child in need to attend a creative workshop

£50 pays for a local artist to receive accessibility and inclusion training 

£200 pays for a network event of change makers to collaborate, share learning and innovate

£1500 pays our part time staff costs for an entire month

Past projects: as part of the Root 1066 International Festival, we commissioned artist Lee Sherman to develop and run an accordion book workshop inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry with primary school students. 

Our planned projects

Zine workshops in schools: A series of zine making workshops in schools for around 60 children identified with poor attendance and additional needs, including neurodivergent students and those with mental health challenges. Designed to foster connection, belonging, and self-expression, this low-barrier, high-engagement creative activity will help strengthen our established relationships with schools, and will be used to build early evidence that creative reconnection can improve attendance and wellbeing for students. 

Inclusive Facilitation Training for Artists: A series of in-depth training sessions for artists on how to run inclusive, accessible workshops for young people. This training will help upskill artists who are already experts in their craft to better understand working in the context of a school, how to design or adapt creative sessions to suit the needs of students, and how to approach working with children that are disengaging from school. 

East Sussex-wide Arts Education Network launch: We have had great success with our previous Hastings and Rother network, and now we are taking it county-wide with a series of in person and online events across East Sussex to build and strengthen relationships between local education, culture and arts sectors. 

Creative Reconnection Pilot: This is our biggest and most ambitious project, to bring highly skilled and well trained artists-in-residence into schools for an entire school year, running a series of workshops focusing on visual art, film, performance and interdisciplinary practice, particularly focussed on engaging children at risk of non-attendance. We are currently writing funding bids for this one as well as seeking donations. 

Why now?

We first established in 2013 as Hastings and Rother Arts Education Network in response to diminishing cultural resources in schools, alongside rising rates of poverty and unequal creative opportunities in East Sussex. For 12 years we delivered local projects, programmes, and network events across Hastings and Rother. 

In 2025, we decided we wanted to expand our geographic focus to cover the whole county and rebranded to Exchange - East Sussex Arts Education Network. With this shift, we are in the process of moving from an entirely volunteer-run network, to a fully-fledged county-wide charity with a dedicated team delivering our mission. 

Your support means so much and will help Exchange jump straight into delivering this exciting new chapter.