HISTORY

"...[CAP] was porous to the general environment – whatever was happening in the general environment, was happening in CAP like a magnifying glass. So you had all the struggles of the society... happening in this tiny fragile organisation – whether it was issues of race... of gender domination... over what the meaning of education was, the meaning of cultural activity."

Shirley Walters, Trustee (1984-1994)

The above insight into the character of the Community Arts Project as an organisation over the past twenty two years offers a useful basis upon which to ‘hang’ a history of the organisation: CAP’s origins and development have always been intimately bound up with developments in the wider society, at both a local and national level. At the same time, the history of the organisation is also the history of a rich diversity of individuals: a product of the complex interaction of people coming from often radically different social, cultural and economic contexts, with different expectations and variously shaded conceptions of what constitutes a ‘Community Arts Project’. The ensuing text represents an attempt to articulate some of these motive forces through the course of three roughly defined ‘periods’ within the Project’s existence.

Overview | Early Years | Middle Years | Recent Years