CVAN WM and CVAN East Midlands are working together to deliver Ode to the Midlands (OttM).an ambitious cross-regional programme that invests in Global Majority, Disabled, Deaf and Neurodivergent mid-career artists through digital commissions, mentoring, peer learning and professional development. Project outcomes will focus on cross-regional connectivity, skills development, network building and profile-raising, helping to strengthen relationships between artists, organisations and audiences across the Midlands.
Work also continues on Creative Workspaces, our Arts Council England funded action-led research project addressing the availability, affordability and sustainability of studio provision for visual artists in Birmingham responding to pressures from rising costs and redevelopment.
Alongside this work, CVAN WM’s recently formed Steering Group of artists and arts workers continues to develop and grow, helping to shape our methodologies, actions and strategic direction to ensure that support for artists, arts workers and organisations is relevant and responsive.
CVAN EM will use its AGM as a key moment to raise network awareness, stimulate dialogue and support Steering Group transition during a period of significant regional and national change. Taking place in the light of Arts Council England’s review and the evolving priorities of the Combined Authority, the AGM will help attract interest in CVAN EM’s work. It will also support the recruitment of new Steering Group members ensuring a refreshed and representative leadership.
As mentioned in the update from CVAN WM, we’ll continue to deliver Ode to the Midlands together, .whilst our core creative and professional development programmes also continue. These include bursaries, mentoring and Better Together, all of which support artists, arts workers and organisations to respond to regional challenges and opportunities.
YORKSHIRE AND HUMBER VISUAL ARTS NETWORK YVAN
As a research led organisation, we will be building on our recent organisational review and exploring how to embed the idea of ‘care’ across our work, looking for extra resources to support this.Our investment programme has now been confirmed, and as a result we’ll be working with partners including Situation Leeds, Yorkshire Sculpture International and Artbomb (Doncaster). Another core objective for 2026 is to work with those artists and organisations who are at the forefront of climate justice in our region.
In our support of our artist-led ambitions, we’ll be building relationships and facilitating face-to-face opportunities for networking as well as looking at ways we can grow the impact and capacity in our sector. This goes hand-in-hand with Beyond the Mainstream, our online social event.
Advocating and promoting the visual arts in our region and collating data to enable CVAN England to lobby for visual artists as always,remains one of our core purposes.
We were delighted to be awarded funding from Arts Council England tosupport us to redevelop our website, improving accessibility and adding new features, including an Arts Worker directory. The funding also supports new working models to ensure organisational stability and sustainability.
In 2026, we’ll be delivering initiatives that offer vital support for artists which have been developed in response to our Artists and Arts Worker survey research. This includes the second round of Curator Bank (an initiative established in partnership with The Burton at Bideford, which offers artists one-to-one meetings with curators based in organisations); a new pilot to establish models that unlock unused spaces within organisations for artists in partnership with Plymouth Culture; and new free resources and editorial to support professional development and knowledge exchange.
In the Spring we’ll publish our Artists and Arts Workers survey report to set out priorities for the future of South West visual arts, providing evidence to influence policy and advocate for fairer pay and greater investment.
In 2026 we aim to develop the connectivity between artists in the region and our partner network. We’ll create afree artist membership which will offer resources, networking and opportunities and we’llwill continue our bimonthly Neurodivergent Peer Group for arts workers.
Our Platform Graduate Award 2026 will show 30 graduates from 13 universities across four exhibition partners, with four awardees each receiving a bursary and six-months of mentoring support.
We’ll continue to strengthen our network of 36 partners across the region with updates and discussions on relevant topics such as devolution and local government reorganisation, and we’ll come togetherat the end of the year for a one-day programme emphasising sector support, exchange and collaboration. In addition to this, we’ll host two meetings for comms teams in our network to share and develop best practice, and also re-establish a curator network for the region.
CVAN NW will work to sustain and develop opportunities for advocacy and strategic development for artists in the Northwest, as well as increasing the visibility and impact of the CVAN NW Network. During 2026 we aim to:
- Continue to highlight the work of NW artists and profile opportunities across all CVAN NW digital channels, aiming for a 10% increase in engagement across our newsletter, socials and website.
- Distribute the findings of the cross-sector Nature Culture Champions pilot in Wigan to other local authorities and relevant bodies
- Strengthen our area of strategic focus (Climate Justice, Health & Wellbeing and Placemaking) to develop a minimum of two activities designed to grow opportunities for artists and creatives in the region to work with partners across sectors, i.e. developing a pan-regional approach to Green Creative Health with Nature North & the Culture Health & Wellbeing Alliance.
- Identify case studies on successful cross-sector projects that have demonstrated mutually beneficial outcomes and share these via our website
- Recruit and diversify our Steering Group by a minimum of two new members
- Contribute to the regional and national strategy groups of at least two relevant areas.
Our annual London Visual Arts Review directs our 2025-6 priorities and programme, which covers monthly meetings, events, research and advocacy. These include:
AREVA (anti racist & equitable visual arts) Writers’ Room II. Awriting programme for organisations who want to evaluate the institutional language they use, creating new vocabularies of equity and care which enable themto identify language or communications that create unwitting bias. Using creative writing and textual analysis approaches, the programme will help participants invent new language for their organisations. Part of AREVA, CVAN London’s equality programme, the Writers’ Room aims to address a major systemic cause of inequality—the use of language—in the London and wider visual arts sector.
The Creative Learning Hub holds space for creative learning professionals, gallery educators, artists and arts workers across London for them to connect and co-produce new Creative Learning conversations. In 2026, a second Play & Participation professional development programme for artists will take place in Priority Place,Newham, while the Emerging Curators Programme in Priority Place, Brent.
We will lead the development of the digital badging of children’s art skills as part of THRIVE, a Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded programme led by Rosetta Arts in partnership with CVAN London, Eko Trust, and Newham Heritage Centre.
We’l also publish the UCL consultancy report on Affordable Artist’s Studios in London, building upon our 5 priorities for London Studios & Meanwhile Spaces.
Through Climate Adaptation for the Visual Arts, with UCL CAVE, GLA and Buro Happold, we’ve explored Action Planning for Climate Resilience in the City and are developing a UCL CAVE task group to study the impacts of temperature, pollution, humidity and ventilation on people and artefacts, as well as modelling climate adaptation in art environments (galleries and storage facilities).
Our programme Data Matters responds to the sectors ambitions to explore the opportunity of arts and technologies; to think differently about data and digital, and to tell better stories using our data. Guest Curator Sylwia Serafinowicz will lead three panel discussions on How to Sustain Sustainability.
In partnership with DACS, we’ll publish Origin: A Certification Framework for Human Creativity in GenAI, an AHRC funded knowledge exchange programme led by Assoc. Professor Nidhi Chaudray of the UCL Policy Lab and CVAN London’s Dr Jo Townshend Part of a UCLCoStar Foresight Lab collaboration the project brought together London artists, academics, creative organisations, SMEs and policymakers to explore how we can shape more ethical and sustainable futures for creativity in the age of AI.
We’ll also publish Co-developing Art Technologies for more inclusive Visual Art Spaces, a UCL ART Futures project led by Dr Sara Ahidtya, UCL PEARL, and Dr Jo Townshend, CVAN London, with ActionSpace, Studio Voltaire, Space Studios, ACME Studios, and Cockpit Arts. Through a series of workshops and visits to studios and UCL PEARL, artists and organisations explored how technologies could improve the accessibility of studio environments and the curation of exhibitions for neurodiverse artists.