Future Arts Centres

Our Freedom workshop by Jon Aitken

Trinity is a member of Future Arts Centres, a national network of more than 180 arts centres working together to champion the unique role that creative spaces play at the heart of their communities.

Being part of the network connects Trinity and our communities with arts organisations across the UK, creating opportunities to share ideas, learn from one another and collaborate on new approaches to community-led cultural work. It also gives us a national platform for the role that places like Trinity can play in bringing people together, supporting artists and creating opportunities for people to participate in culture.

As part of this network, in 2025 Trinity contributed to Our Freedom: Then and Now: a UK-wide creative programme marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and exploring what freedom means to people and communities today. The programme created 60 new pieces of art, working with local artists and communities to explore ideas of freedom through different forms of creative practice.

At Trinity, photographer Leticia Valverdes worked with collaborators at the Centre to document their response to a collaborative artwork created with textile artist Sonja Burnie, Bristol poet Sukina Noor and members of the community. Participants were invited to dance with the work to a song they had chosen to express their own sense of freedom. The resulting photographs are touring the UK in 2026 as part of the national Our Freedom exhibition.

Our involvement builds on Future Arts Centres' previous Here and Now programme - a national celebration of culture within communities in 2020. 40 arts centres across the country delivered projects led by artists and co-created with local people. Trinity worked with award-winning multi-disciplinary British/Iranian artist Roxana Vilk to develop her project Lullabies, celebrating the diversity of cultures who call Bristol home. Lullabies connected communities through the sharing of songs, celebrating the stories and the heritage behind them.

Being part of Future Arts Centres is about being part of a collective of arts centres, demonstrating how creative spaces can be rooted in their communities while also connected to a wider national cultural network.

Details on how to join Future Arts Centres can be found here.