Good Things Happening in the House
- Ellie Barrett
- Oct 13
- 3 min read
There’s been so much happening at Good Things Collective in 2025… you might already know about our big plans to launch a new community hub and cafe, which we’ve been fundraising for over the last few months. But you might not know that we’ve also been working hard on our “House of Cooperation” programme, which is funded by Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants.
We’re always thinking about how we balance individual artist practice with collective projects and development, and this programme has helped us to understand what this balance looks like in practice. The funding has supported 5 large scale projects for collective artists, 6 micro-commissions (which we call “activations”) for early-career artists and 5 visits from other artists and external organisations.
We’re over halfway through this project now, so it seems like a good time to mention all the things we’ve done so far…
We’ve provided 5 “lead” projects for collective members:
Ellie Barrett has run 6 creative playgroup sessions called “Everyday Play” for under 5s and their grown-ups;
Charlotte Done and Jack Taylor (Morecambe RisoPress) have designed and printed 3 house zines, called “An Inside Look”;
Wendy O’Hara (Revamp Raccoon) has been upcycling textiles into soft furnishings, making our new atrium space a colourful and comfortable space to be. This has involved launching a new workshop, “Slow Stitching”;
Vaz Lockett (Queer By Gum) has lead 3 queer bike rides on the cycle route between Morecambe and Lancaster;
Jennie Slater-White has hosted 2 live music events at our open house weekends, inviting local musicians to showcase their original songs.
Some of these projects are still ongoing, so keep an eye out for more opportunities to connect.
Ellie's and Wendy’s workshops also visited the Festival of Making in July:
We’ve offered 6 “activation” micro-commissions, supporting early-career artists to try out new ideas:
Becca Snow has designed and developed a chill out space, where people can go for a period in situations and settings where they may have become overwhelmed or overstimulated.
Joe Hargreaves expanded our performance equipment including microphones and DI boxes, improving possibilities for more musicians to play at our venue.
Alison Fisher wrote and performed a play called "Magnum Bonum" at our last open house weekend, exploring the history of the vegetarian society and its relationship with class.
Liana Obradovic is making a series of carved wooden sculptures and has run an artist-led walk with our collective members collecting driftwood. A final sculpture will be permanently installed in our building.
Jack Taylor has designed some new Good Things Collective “characters”, which will be upscaled and transferred onto our windows to communicate our collective values.
Our collective co-workers will be running a series of skills-sharing workshops in our community studio to share their practices with each other.
We’ve built some exciting connections with artists and organisations:
In March, Akhil Scafe-Smith from RESOLVE Collective spoke about his work, and led us through a model-building workshop to help us envisage our plans for our building.
Super Slow Way visited us in May, talking to us about how they consider space and environment as a way of engaging with people.
We welcomed Anna Taylor and Paul Hartley from In Situ in June, speaking with us about their organisational structure and running their workshop “Talk-e-Oke” with us.
Our August event, “Threads of Change”, was a celebration of textiles practice in Morecambe and Lancaster. We heard from Wendy O’Hara, Lancaster Sewing Cafe, Amy Dickson, Queer By Gum and James Fox.
At the end of October, our last visit of the year will be from the Festival of Making. We’ll be thinking about how to respond to and develop a creative brief.
We hope these visits will build into long-term relationships in the future, informing how we work with artists, programme activities and run our organisation.
This programme has been full of exciting activities, new pieces of learning, and new ways of working. We've connected with so many people, in so many different ways. We’ll be sharing our evaluation towards the end of the year, and using all of this new knowledge to develop our House of Cooperation programme for 2026.