Workshops, Exhibitions & Mentoring via the Solidarity Arts Project

Our Solidarity Arts project ran across 2025/26 in Carlisle and the west coast of Cumbria. The project allowed us to employ young and emerging artists to deliver workshops to our community via regular creative meet-ups in Carlisle and to reach young artists Whitehaven and Barrow.

These creative meet-ups were a great way for Queer creatives to come together, develop creative skills and have a go at new ways of working. It also meant that Queer folks could deliver workshops to people like us, and we could start building a real community across Cumbria, arguably for the first time.

Workshops popped up for fun as well as being steered around exhibition ideas, with all the work being displayed publicly in The Closet, out tiny cupboard gallery in Carlisle! Exhibitions included STAMP! Tiny Art, Gender Euphoria, Carlisdoscope Global Majority Artists, Mend Textile Exhibition, QueerMas, Queer Originals Fashion Show and our QueerGen Exhibition, showcasing the work of our mentees.

It also allowed us to launch our Queer Artist Mentor Scheme, providing creative mentors to five young and marginalised artists from Cumbria. The mentors supported mentees to develop their artistic practice and build a body of work to go on display in a collective exhibition in The Closet in May 2026.

This project had a profound impact on Queer Cumbria, allowing us to structure our organisation, employ 2 young producers, 4 mentors and 10 freelance creatives, showcase 8 Queer exhibitions, platform over 30 young artists and engage with over 3500 audience members!

Thank you to Arts Council England for all of the advice and support over this period and for allowing this work to happen.