Home is where the garden is – Civic Programme
The theme for 2024-26, titled Home is where the garden is, explores the garden as a metaphor for spaces of cultivation, rooting and unexpected encounters. It is built around a rhizomatic framework that focuses on the networks, systems and communities that form civic space.
Our Civic Programme puts community knowledge, expertise and skill at the forefront of what we do, and acts as a period of active research and development for our Associates Programme curriculum. The programme builds upon and extends the long-term relationships that we have built with local communities and organisations in Kent. Projects have tangible impacts on wellbeing, access, community-led expertise and social inclusion. They look to build cross sector partnerships with an ambition to support participants to shape the places and communities they live and work in with support of the partner organisations.
Our lead Civic Partner is Despacito Art School.
Despacito Art School: Home is where the garden is
Summer Exhibition 2025
Friday 22 – Sunday 24 August 2025
An exhibition of artwork made by Despacito Art School with guest artists Samara Scott, Harold Offeh and Flora Parrott, with the work made with community partners as part of Open School East’s roaming civic project Home is where the garden is – find out more and RSVP for the opening preview using the link below.
Despacito Art School – Summer Exhibition: Home is where the garden is
Join us to celebrate ongoing projects with Despacito Art School in our summer exhibition
Mobile Growing
Home is where the garden is
Co-design of programme and visual identity
Young artist members of Despacito Art School learnt about typography, symbols and signs and made their own fonts and symbols with drawing, collage and found materials to create a new typeface for Home is where the garden is.
They also undertook mapping exercises to think about civic, public and green spaces in Margate, including sharing stories of migration and mapping how communities form and are established in shared civic space. This session led to the development of the new visual identity for Home is where the garden is as well as informed the design, content and location of other programme strands.
The ‘Home is…’ project identity and unique typeface is designed by Despacito Art School in collaboration with OSE artist and designer George Harding.
Mobile Growing Unit
Over the last year OSE and Despacito Art School have been working with designer and architect Jonathan Boyle (State Studio) to develop the community mobile growing unit, which will tour Cliftonville West and Margate in the summer of 2025. The unit is modular and follows a DIY aesthetic ethos, with opportunities for it to be adapted and remodelled in future iterations.
The design of the project, including ideas for the unit itself, the typography and where it will travel have all been co-designed with Despacito Art School as part of our Civic Programme. This approach has also shaped OSE’s wider programmes, with civic-thinking embedded across all programme strands.
The unit is currently designed to host pop-up growing, art and recipe-making workshops. This mobile growing unit stems from the artistic practice of OSE’s Artistic Director Polly Brannan, who has developed and co-designed mobile roaming platforms with and within public and civic spaces with local communities over the last 20 years.
A series of pop-up workshops will take place this Summer 2025 with OSE’s key Civic Partners Roma Drom: Cliftonville Culture Centre, Cliftonville Community Centre, Age UK Thanet and EthelAthel Alley, with other community organisations joining later.
The first pop-up workshops include DIY poster making, growing and sharing stories, led by OSE’s Artistic Director Polly Brannan. All of this work will be developed into a project publication.
Artist Research Commission:
Hugh Nicholson
Open School East has commissioned artist and writer Hugh Nicholson to undertake a period of research into our three core themes: Material, Produce and Civic Space as part of our current two-year programming cycle Home is where the garden is. This situated research will lay the foundation for future planning and activities across OSE’s current two-year programming cycle, as well as for a series of active ‘research groups’ led by Hugh to be held with the next cohort of Associate artists between September and December 2025.
Civic Partner Sessions
OSE began to develop existing and establish new relationships with local community organisations across Cliftonville West and Thanet. Our key Civic Partners are embedded within the communities we work with and are an essential part of co-devising, shaping and platforming the diversity of voices and lived experiences in our locale.
Pop-up sessions in Cliftonville West
In the summer of 2025, we continue our pop-up sessions across Cliftonville West and Margate in collaboration with other civic partners as well as working in-situ in and around Northdown Road, Margate and across public and civic spaces.
Planting the Community Garden in EthelAthel Alley
Seedlings that Despacito planted with OSE’s community gardener will now be planted out into the community garden EthelAthel Alley in Cliftonville West. This is a new partnership that OSE has formed so that Despacito families can access their plants and have the beginning of their own community garden on their doorstep. Some families are also tending their plants at home, including broad beans and other edible vegetables.
There will be a celebration of work this Summer, kindly supported by the use of Roland Ross Gallery.
