About Us

Creative Exchange is a UK registered charity (number 1096765).

Creative Exchange's activities help people connect and share ideas and skills, learn about the use of culture and arts in social settings, and change and influence policy and practice. Creative Exchange projects are gathering knowledge about new ways of fighting poverty, conflict, ill-health and injustice.

We focus on Culture as identity and values, and Arts as a way of expressing our identity and our ideas, and exploring opportunities for change. If culture is an important landscape for human development then the arts is the soundtrack - we need to understand how they are collectively contributing to our future and to resolving some of the challenges we face.

How we work:

  • Connect: Creative Exchange is a network that connects people and organisations all over the world - from the grassroots to the UN - who are working with arts and culture to achieve social development. Creative Exchange 'members' are known as partners.
  • Share: Creative Exchange collects and distributes knowledge and does research that grows our collective understanding of the value of culture and arts to human development. We provide research, publications and contacts. We send out regular email bulletins and we hold networking events to keep professionals in touch.
  • Learn: Creative Exchange helps people to learn from and build on one another’s experiences and skills through projects, networking activity and training.
  • Change: The value of culture and the social role of arts activity is not always well understood or respected. We draw on the learnings and knowledge of our networking community to change the way both the public and policymakers perceive and work with arts and culture.

Vision, mission and values

Vision

Our vision is for a world where arts and culture play a significant role in human development

Mission:

To advance public education about ways in which arts and culture help poor and disadvantaged people improve their quality of life.

Values:

  • We acknowledge the value of arts, culture and creativity as a foundation for individual and community growth.
  • We respect cultural rights and will work to achieve better understanding of their role in sustainable development and empowerment.
  • We believe in policy and practice that enables people to participate in addressing their own needs.
  • We support the sharing of knowledge to improve the quality of action and policy affecting poor and disadvantaged people.
  • We strive for equitable partnerships and participation in our work internationally.

Creative Exchange has three strategic aims: Providing Information and Services, Improving Policy and Practice, and Strengthening the Network.

History

A round table was held in May 1997 bringing together representatives from the development and arts sectors and the majority view was to form a network.

Creative Exchange was founded in 1998 and finally became a registered charity in 2000 In many respects, Creative Exchange has simply formalised the informal connections between social, development and cultural activists, which have had been growing since the 1970s. But is It has widened this network and introduced many new activists and organisations to the debate. The Internet has been a significant factor in that process.

Creative Exchange is operating in a different landscape to the one in which it was born and its primary responsibility is to support the development of greater public awareness, better policy and practice, and the networking infrastructure through which our collective knowledge of this sector can evolve.