Over 25^th and 26^th February 2016 The Stove Network co-produced and hosted a national summit called Art_Inbetween about integrated arts practice in rural regions. The summit attracted participants from all around the British Isles including invited teams from Scottish Highlands, Northumberland and South Wales. Art_Inbetween consisted of a series of structured conversations on 6 topics which supported artists, art professionals, academics and other stakeholders in art practice to share ideas and experience, listen to others and shape new ideas collaboratively.

‘Towns, villages and other rural places provide a different challenge for artists and arts organisations. By necessity, the arts in rural regions often operate in an innovative, integrated and inbetween way – with the arts acting as a bridge between other forces at work in a place. In understanding the present and future value of the arts in society, there is a need to recognise, re-articulate and explore the distinctiveness of the contemporary rural arts scene. Art_Inbetween is an arts-led summit for people working in smaller places to come together to share experience, knowledge and dreams in a creative and useful environment.’   – Art_Inbetween Summit pack

Day two was for invited teams only, it began with presentations sharing the ‘micro-contexts’ of the home regions of the teams and also included presentations by experts indifferent fields of funding support for integrated/participatory arts practice. Through the day participants were led by facilitator Sam Cassels (Scottish Futures Trust) to develop a series of new project proposals for future collaborative working between Higher Education and the arts practice based on the discussions of Day One.

Artists Jo Hodges and Robbie Coleman were commissioned through Art_Inbetween to attend the summit and then develop a piece of work around ideas that interested them that came out of the summit. Jo and Robbie’s Blog following the summit is here.