Solihull Cultural Education Partnership (CEP)

Katie is Solihull CEPs Development Coordinator and Project Producer, managing a range of projects to support children and young people to access arts and cultural opportunities.

Regular programming includes:

- The Annual Creative Careers Event:
Brining together arts professionals in a series of panels, performances and workshops for schools, colleges and a public audience.

- A yearly schools gallery exhibition:
These involve 70-100 young people each time. Schools are invited to submit students work to display in The Core Theatre's Courtyard Gallery for a 3 week period.

- Tea Party: Cultural Marketplace:
This uses Arts Connects successful Tea Party structure to introduce Solihull based arts and cultural organisations and freelancers to teachers and youth series looking to expand their programme and work in new art forms.


Other projects have included:

- My Community, My Heritage My Place:
Running across May 2023 - March 2024, the festival worked with schools across the Solihull borough to celebrate home, community, and identity, focusing on communities from Ukraine and Hong Kong in particular.
Each school worked with an artist across 5 days, using a variety of art forms to explore the themes in new and exciting ways. This culminated in a celebration event at Cineworld Solihull on 5th March.
The project engaged a total of 1047 young people.

- Gen22:
Funded by United By 2022, this project offered meaningful work experience opportunities in the arts and cultural industry for young people aged 16-24. 5 incubators were established in TV, Film, Music, Visual Arts and Theatre.

- Young Core Creatives:
Targeted at young people aged 18-25, Young Core Creatives is an extention project to Gen22. This free, transformative programme, intends to bridge the gap for emerging professionals to embed themselves into the creative industry.

- The Chelmsley Tale:
The Chelmsley Tale is a magical, hilarious storytelling theatre show that brings to life the fairytales and legends surrounding the origins of Chelmsley Wood. The show toured to 30 schools and libraries May-July 2025, and visited a total of 2,686 young people! Over 1,000 of them also took part in a following drama workshop ‘What’s my Tale’.

- Moments of Wow:
28 schools & over 3,000 young people worked with 3 partner organisations on our Moments of Wow project, which tested various forms of artistic interventions in education settings.

- Festival 36
Over June and July 2023, Festival 36 celebrated Shakespeares folio coming to the borough of Solihull. Solihull CEP sent 36 bards in 36 schools to perform pop up monologues throughout the school day.

Since 2022, Katie has built Solihull CEP from the ground up, on behalf of Solihull Council. It has now got a membership of over 90, made up of a network of schools, arts organisations, freelancers, public and private sector, and more.