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Black brick amongst the red brick that surrounds it
straight away symbolises something new.
It's a fast tracking space that connects with communities
and is prepared to move quickly with them.
It's a magnificent portal for change.
The communities here are from across the world.
And so engaging their voice, their perspective,
is a central part to how this space is programmed.
We also have a vocal local conversation
and that's very much a gloves-off debate about issues facing communities
triggered by some of the themes of the exhibition.
At the moment we've got the Rawiya Collective from the Middle East.
It's a collective of female photographers.
They're looking at issues concerning their communities back in the Middle East.
But we've also in our vocal session looked at bringing Middle Eastern women
who live in this location
to talk about the exhibition but also their experience here in Britain today.
So the whole spectrum of programming here
is based on those multiple ways that cultures connect.
The Creative Case is about providing a confident voice
where that creativity from those communities can be presented
at the highest possible level in terms of production value and excellence.
There aren't many organisations that are in a neighbourhood like Hyson Green
that present international contemporary art and local art combined
with the community's perspective on society.
Today we feature a wonderful artist called Zoe Rahman.
She represents something really core
about the Creative Case for diversity in culture and art.
Her heritage is Bangladeshi and English.
What Zoe does is that she draws on the expertise of the tradition of jazz
which is improvisation and so many forms of language
and she features that by drawing on her heritage from Bangladesh.
And the reason why we have her here today is because she's telling her story.
This space and this organisation
is really about listening and responding and being pro-active.
I'm forever having conversations in the café, in front of my house,
in the gallery with people, just to hear their story.
There have been many projects that have come out of this,
many relationships that have been built as a consequence.
And in the end it is about relationships, it is about people.
It's about bringing art and culture to the community
that can connect with them
and getting the community then to influence what's presented here.
I started at the old Art Exchange as a volunteer in 1991.
I was here for about two years.
It was such a brilliant atmosphere.
There was a real confidence coming out of the Asian and Black communities.
The Black Art movement started in many ways from Nottingham Trent.
We called them the Trent Boys.
Those guys formed their thinking in this place, in this location.
I came back after 16 years because I remembered
what it meant to me and how it changed my life.
We've raised the stakes from 20 years ago,
so that confidence is now glowing in a way that
we no longer as a community trail but lead.
And lead new ways of thinking.
The Creative Case can lead to an infinite range
of new thinking, new product, new stories, new aesthetics of how art is presented.
in a contemporary way,
that will then transform how art and culture is seen as part of our life,
that it's seen as part of our life as oxygen is.
This is about conversation,
that's happening on an on-going basis and it will never end.
captions by www.subtext-berlin.com