History
In 2012, two friends, who were practicing artists came together questioning what it would take to have a sustainable career, in a city that isn’t considered a creative capital, like London. That line of enquiry led Amber Caldwell and Amahra Spence to set up MAIA the following year, in support of a wider creative ecology.
Following a number of experiments and initiatives, like The Creative Entrepreneurs Club and partnerships with organisations like SBTV & BBC, it became clear the problems preventing artists from living and working freely were systemic and wouldn’t have quick solutions. We couldn’t talk about sustaining creativity in communities without acknowledging the ways power and privilege manifest in society.
So our work shifted, exploring how artists engaging in radical imagination, could create infrastructure to bring about transformative societal change. In turn, we were connecting other artists with resources so they could do the same. But this requires an evolving redefining of what it means to be an ‘artist’, free from the elitism and connotations that have come with the title traditionally.
Impact
Since 2013, MAIA has invested over £300,000 directly into community-rooted artists across the country, across hundreds of opportunities. We’ve delivered digital and virtual programmes and have partnered with 37 national organisations to deliver work across the country, not including international work in Portugal, Germany and Southern Africa. We have provided 84 paid internships to students and young people marginalised by the industry. In 2020, we established a creative community hub and residency space, YARD, alongside three funds distributing £22,000 in COVID related emergency grants.
Theory of Change
When community-rooted artists have the capacity, imagination and the tools to envision beyond our current paradigm, they establish the blueprints for bold change at scale.
A world in which more people have the resources and opportunity to consider themselves as artists; to dream, express, play and lead freely helps to create wellness, meaningful transformation, and infrastructure grounded in healing, liberation, joy and collective care.
Black Led
MAIA engages in this work through the lens of radical Black imaginations, championing the hopes, perspectives, ambitions, cultures, knowledge and visions of those racialised as Black. This doesn’t mean we only work with Black artists. But it does mean we are intentional in how we interrogate and address complex systemic injustice on the journey for a world in which all people are free to create, express and live freely.
