About Be It

We believe that young people have the knowledge and insight to be leaders now—not just in the future—with the potential to radically shift our cities and creative industries towards true cooperation and inclusion. Our aim is for young people to be represented at every level of the arts, including the strategic. Over two years from 2020-2021, BE IT directly supported twenty 18-30 year olds through our radical leadership programme. We focused on nurturing and empowering these existing, unrecognised young leaders in the city and provided opportunities for them to lead, share their thoughts with the sector and shake things up. BE IT gave these young leaders the vital opportunity to experiment, fail and share their learning. This community has been built through a radical model of holistic personal leadership development, which gave them opportunities to challenge the structures within the creative sector – and the city – that continue to exclude them.

WHO

Rising Arts Agency

A genuinely youth led social enterprise run by young creative thinkers in Bristol. Our mission is to empower Bristol’s underrepresented young people to fulfil their creative ambitions and to affect wider social change through the arts. The agency is gently anti-establishment, co-created with and for young people, and fiercely independent. Rising is an agency, not an organisation. Our artists are a community not a service user-base, and are embedded in creative strategic decision making at every level of our work.

Roseanna Dias – Executive Producer

Bristol based producer, curator and facilitator interested in creativity, care and social change. Founder of Studio Susegad and co-lead of UnEarthed, Roseanna co-creates action research, engagement programmes and events with creatives aged 18-30, BIPOC artists, and those in creative tech.

Prince Taylor – Creative Producer

Born and raised in South West London to first generation Ghanian immigrants, Prince very quickly learned to question the issues raised by the diasporic experience. His work as a Podcaster, Creative Producer and Trustee at Arnolfini explores how we can pull new communities into conversations around creative tech and it’s use in the culture sector.

Arts Council England

Funded by the National Lottery, Transforming Leadership was launched to address specific issues around diversity across leadership, opportunities for emerging and early career leaders, and the development of executive skills at senior levels.