Compassion Over Competition Report

Earlier this year, Heart of Glass commissioned consultants Amanda Smethurst and Sarah Boiling to explore what a professional development offer might look like for practitioners and commissioners working in social and collaborative arts practice.

This piece of research was funded by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and took place at a significant moment for social arts practice and co-creation; with the launch of Arts Council England’s ‘Let’s Create’ 2020-30 strategy to dissolve ‘barriers between artists and audiences’ (Serota, 2021).

In this report, we focus on the headlines from the ‘roundtable’ conversations with practitioners and survey responses with commissioners in October 2022 to support professional development across the sector.