The Gathering: Celebrating lost traditions

• Raised £39,150 from 66 supporters
• +£4,086 Extra funding from Sovereign Thriving Communities
• Creating a large-scale community festival that celebrates the sea, helping Plymothians develop a deeper love for The Sound.

The Plymouth Sound has become the UK’s first National Marine Park, but how connected are we with this incredible seascape?  The Gathering project plans to create a large-scale community event that celebrates the every day heritage of The Sound and its lost traditions.  An event that encourages the community to care for this incredible space.  

To make this happen, The Conscious Sisters CIC will bring together people living in neighbourhoods which border the water and one neighbourhood in the suburbs.  Working with the best environmental, creative and heritage experts they will explore the relationship to the ocean and develop ideas for a brand new, grass-roots creative community event.

This event will celebrate local maritime and seascape history and bring the community closer to the sea.  Plymouth has been a fishing and trading settlement since the Bronze Age and The Conscious Sisters CIC want to revisit lost traditions and forgotten stories.

The Conscious Sisters CIC is a socially engaged arts company based in Plymouth, which produces unique art projects working with and for the community. Real-life sisters, Karen Evans and Fiona Evans love collaborative working with communities and specialise in work that explores identity, drawing from over 40 years of experience of inclusion and race work.

Their vision is to deliver a programme of arts and environmental workshops to at least 200 local people including children, local community and youth groups in areas including Whitleigh, Stonehouse and Devonport.

In addition, commissions will be collated into an exhibition to travel round the seaboard to be seen at least 20,000 residents.

The Gathering intends to benefit at least 20,210 local people in the first year, and  will help to create a blueprint for a future large-scale event which will benefit the whole city.

We caught up with the Conscious Sisters themselves, Fiona and Karen Evans and asked them about their crowdfunding journey;

“We chose Crowdfunder when an application to Arts Council England was rejected.  We were gutted of course but dusted ourselves off and thought ‘Well, we have nothing to lose!’  We were worried with the timing of our crowdfunder campaign that the cost of living crisis was upon us and we knew money was short… we looked online and saw a range of potential match funders and decided to give them a go.”

They needed to raise £30,000 towards environmental, creative & heritage practitioners and project coordination, materials, workshop space, refreshments for workshop participants, exhibition tech hire, and exhibition printing.

The crowd rallied around their project, with one commenter saying; 

“I’m more grateful than words can express for the incredible world we live in. The magical chemical processes that form water, creating seas and rivers and rain that enable all of life to exist is wonderful. Thanks for making a project to give space to worship and celebration of wondrous 500 million years of life.”

Fiona and Karen went on to say; “Crowdfunder started the ball rolling with our fundraising, it promoted the work and delivered new supporters to The Gathering.  Without Crowdfunder this project would not exist. It is also a great way of seeing your idea in the public realm, open to the scrutiny of others.  That can be scary, but it also can make you bold!”

“Once we had finished our crowdfunder we decided to go for forever funding. This means that you have a full-time shop front for the work, that you can direct potential supporters to. Organisations and local authority staff enjoy seeing the support on the crowdfunder page, it gives them confidence when they are thinking about funding your work, and also that their contribution will get matched.”

In the end, The Gathering project beat their initial target and went on to raise £39,150from 66 members of the community. This included £4,086 in funding from the Sovereign Thriving Communities fund.

When asked about the impact this funding will have, The Conscious Sisters said; “We have only just started but already we are so well connected. So many people have come forward wanting to get involved.”

“It [this funding] will allow us to deliver workshops to more people. It helped us reach our Crowdfunder target and unlock further funding from Arts Council England.  It also made us aware of the Sovereign Housing that exists in the neighbourhoods where we are working.  We are keen to work with people in social housing.” 

After such a successful first experience of crowdfunding, and receiving the +Extra funding from Sovereign Housing, we asked Fiona and Karen for their top crowdfunding tips;

“Hold your nerve. It’s hard work yes, but it’s great engagement. That is something you are going to have to do when the project is up and running, so you might as well start now. Making a video is important and keep your message clear and succinct. The match funding is absolutely 100% worth going for. You might not think you will be successful but we highly recommend you give it a shot.” 

“We also used our crowdfunder to apply for match Arts Council Funding and guess what..when we re-submitted we were successful. So eventually we ended up with a well funded and supported piece of work, which is a dream beginning to The Gathering project.” 

Feeling inspired? Find out if you could receive up to £10,000 from the Sovereign Thriving Communities fund!