Pallant House Gallery is a Gallery of twentieth century modern and contemporary British art, located in Chichester, West Sussex.

The Gallery has an ethos of ‘New Perspectives. Creative Lives’ with a mission to share and stimulate new thinking on British art and to play a pivotal role in the creative lives of the widest possible audience. This means our Public Programmes work is really important.

The Public Programmes team consists of 7 people – working to coordinate events, activities and projects for adults, families, schools and young people. Our Community Programme for adults with a range of support needs has been running for the past 15 years and this is what we’d like to focus on during our Skills Sharing Session.

Individuals can join the Gallery’s Community Programme as a participant or a volunteer. We currently have 194 members. We offer an opportunity to be creative in a supportive and welcoming environment, providing long term and meaningful ways for people to engage and have a creative life. The Programme consists of regular practical art sessions every week, trips to inspire people’s artist practice, exhibition opportunities both internally and externally and sessions to discuss artworks. Also on offer is Partners in Art, which pairs a participant and volunteer based on their art interest, to explore their passion through creating art work or discussing art work together, either in or outside of the Gallery. Alongside this, we have a National Lottery funded project called Pallant Partners that enables people in Bognor Regis and Littlehampton to access art sessions through partnerships with local organisations. You can find out more here: https://pallant.org.uk/learn-with-us/community-programme/

We know about the successes and challenges of working with adults with support needs on a long term basis, how to work in a non-labelled way and how to have a life-changing effect on people’s wellbeing – but we’re always learning. We’re really looking forward to discussing the topic of community work with you all on April 23.