Projects
Selected projects and initiatives from the MAIA archive, exploring how we work with artists to reimagine paradigms and transform systems for liberation.
- Resources -
The Freedom Fund
An outcomes-free pot of money for Black artists in the West Midlands
The Freedom Fund
A no-outcomes-expected resource available for Black artists across the West Midlands region. We aren’t currently accepting any further applications.
West Midlands Artist Coronavirus Impact Fund
WM Artist COVID Impact Fund
A crowd-resourced hardship fund in support of artists and cultural workers impacted, in various ways, by COVID-19. All funds have been redistributed.
FREE YARD
An exercise of mutual aid, opening YARD Tuesday - Thursday weekly, for free public access, so our community, artists and visitors can use our facilities and resources or reimagine the space at no cost. This includes free space hire, a community kitchen, free access to healers and wellness practitioners-in-residence, a pop up self-tape studio, a recording studio, IT suite, podcasting equipment, a growing library of texts and accessibility tools and more. All within the container of a reimagined three-storey townhouse.
Talks + Events
- Spaces -
YARD
YARD is a creative studio, residency space and neighbourhood hub. In Ladywood, Birmingham, MAIA have transformed a 3-storey townhouse, into a space where community & artists-in-residence can make work, congregate, experiment and rest. YARD is a Site of Imagination, where we’re practicing what collective power and radical possibility looks like.
ABUELOS: Artist Hotel
MAIA is currently developing the proposal for ABUELOS: an artist-led hotel and cultural centre, that reimagines the possibilities for art spaces, hospitality and cultural economics. A unique typology of space, ABUELOS is inspired by Grandad’s house: a sanctuary and boundless space to celebrate, gather, politic, make, exchange, tell stories and REST.
“MAIA creates places and spaces for artists to organise, present their work and share ideas. ”
- Resources -
Freedom Fund
Can we use hip-hop to remix the future of architecture and have a say about how our city is built? Using sound, poetry, generative design and digital technologies, this 3 day programme puts this to practice.
Art
We commissioned 5 artists to make artworks for ART 30. The premise was simple: 30 hours, for limited edition, mysterious artworks, to be sold for just £30 each!
- Programmes & Seasons -
MAIA: May Programme
A month long programme of online talks, workshops and commissions, all centred around joy, the city, arts & community.
Imagination Szn
The Spatial Imagination
P.O.C is an open network for producers of colour, working across the arts, creative & media industries. By ‘producers’, we simply mean anyone who creates or organises to get things done
“Where do we begin? We begin by embracing our culture, by loving Blackness, by revelling in the beauty and sweetness of artistic creation. After all, the uses of art are boundless.”
- Valerie Boyd
Of The City
‘Of the City’ is an open-forum, salon-style event, based around a theme, where those that join us set the agenda. Attendees include artists, students, community organisers, entrepreneurs, designers, researchers, photographers, local authorities and many others invested in the future of our cities.
Developers’ Dinner
MAIA brought together community members, artists, property developers, architects and others to explore their relationship with regeneration and city development in the context of a rapidly changing Birmingham.
The cultural heart which artists bring to a city is a force which creates energy, ideas, vibrancy & ambition to build a local economy for all.
- Annual events -
MAIA Weekender 2019
- Artist Support -
Strengthen, support, & amplify the voices, visions and hopes of our community.
PROTOTYPE
A quarterly-live crowdfunding event for local creative projects and ideas. Prototype makes space for creatives to share early versions of their ideas, learning to pitch, building an audience and connecting with commissioning bodies.
Scratch Nights
You bring your talent, we bring a group of people eager to hear and see the next big thing. Test your own new material and watch some of other creatives shine at Scratch Night.
“Exploring all of the ways creative people contribute to the world around them, MAIA acts as a broker for the rich and complex value that artists bring into places and advocates for the fair and equitable redistribution of that value.”
