10132232Artists for Artists Community Practice DevelopmentClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKThe Middle Floor presents: Artists for Artists Community Practice Development Project. A new strand of work seeking to support emerging artists in developing the skills necessary for community based practice. The Middle Floor is an arts organisation based in the heart of Leeds which supports the professional development of emerging dance artists. We support artists to create high quality performance work, as well as to provide classes and workshops to enable dancers to maintain the high level of training required to work in contemporary dance. At The Middle Floor, we feel passionately about supporting artists through our work. While our current programme predominantly supports dance, through this grant we will be able to expand our programme of work to new artistic disciplines. The Middle Floor is run by experienced artists with backgrounds in community focussed practice, who have first-hand insight into the challenges faced by emerging artists. We are a grassroots organisation aiming to practically support artists and directly tackle the challenges they face. Through Artists for Artists Community Practice Development, The Middle Floor will support three Leeds based artists from Music, Fine Art and Photography. We will provide training and mentorship for the selected artists to deliver community focussed sessions in our venue. We will 'matchmake' between emerging artists and established community arts practitioners to deliver four months of mentorship, as well as deliver 4 skills-based training workshops for the emerging artists covering: pedagogy, marketing, business set up and safeguarding. These sessions will also be made available for the wider professional arts community to attend. The programme will culminate in the selected artists delivering 11 weeks worth of creative sessions at The Middle Floor while being supported by their mentors, and by the end the emerging artists will be confident in the design and delivery of their creative sessions, will have benefited from bespoke support and development for their creative practice, and will have built an audience for their work that will enable them to continue delivering their class or session beyond the programme.