Blueprint Arts

Blueprint Arts (BPA) is a grassroots community arts organisation delivering inclusive, well-being-focused, and educational arts experiences across North Kent. For nearly 20 years, they have worked with communities, particularly in disadvantaged areas, to use the arts as a transformative tool to enrich lives/strengthen connections. BPA creates innovative projects that inspire, empower, and build technical/creative skills through informal learning. By fostering healthier, stronger, more sustainable communities, they aim to ensure everyone can access the benefits of arts/culture. Their work is deeply community-led, involving close consultation with beneficiaries to co-create meaningful, impactful initiatives.
They currently work across Gravesham and parts of Dartford with a strong focus on communities in Northfleet, Ebbsfleet, Swanscombe and Greenhithe, leading a placemaking project to enhance cultural engagement in this developing area. 

Mandy Hare Creative Consultant

Mandy has been working in the arts, culture, & creative industries for decades, and has a long and varied history of working closely with and for diverse communities. She currently offers support in strategy, bid writing, and project management & has a huge knowledge on communities in Gravesham.

LV21

LV21 is a historic, 40 metre steel-hulled lightship transformed into a floating art space and performance facility. We are creative consultants and practitioners working with a broad range of clients and partners. We devise, deliver and document art, culture, education and heritage projects.

LV21 is a unique venue, one of Kent’s prime platforms for cultural activities across diverse artistic disciplines.

Gemma Dand

Gemma is a performer, writer and director, vice-chair and joint leader of the Middle Youth Theatre at Gravesend and District Theatre Guild and an Arts and Culture Officer at Gravesham Borough Council. She joined GAS several years ago and has always enjoyed being surrounded by like-minded individuals at GAS meetings and feeling inspired by all of the creativity taking place in Gravesham. Having researched the positive mental health outcomes of applied theatre for her degree thesis, Gemma has a strong belief that the arts should not only be accessible but strongly encouraged and supported and continues to advocate the positive benefits being creative has on people’s wellbeing. She is delighted to currently be the secretary of GAS.

Wendy Robinson

Wendy is a local artist who creates from her home studio in Gravesend. She is a member of Gravesend Art Group and a qualified interior designer, using acrylics and different mediums to create abstract and traditional designs. She uses pouring mediums, sprays , and acrylic paints and is diverse in different contemporary styles. She has exhibited locally including, South London, Medway, and Dartford, and is interested in supporting the local art community. 

Sonnia Montes

Sonnia is a UK-based visual artist born and raised in an artistic family in Colombia. She moved to London in 2000 where she pursued Fine Art as a degree at UAL Central Saint Martins. Living in multicultural city led her to explore and root her artwork in the phenomenology of our shared human experience, seeking intimacy, honesty and poetry. She feels captivated by the layers beneath our narratives that echo through time with the same resonance yet individuality. The juxtaposition of her homeland and adopted home, influenced her to often experiment with elements of nature and the impact associated with the change, as we go through the different transitions of life.

Lauren Mills - Actor/ Facilitator/Theatre Maker

Lauren is originally from Gravesham and has lived and performed in USA, Canada and The Netherlands. She studied literature at the University of Nottingham and McGill University, where she enjoyed her first professional gig at the Montreal Fringe Festival in 2007. Highlights since then include a UK tour of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Pride and Prejudice as well as Keeping it Cool, an award-winning piece of Theatre in Education on the topic of conflict resolution. In 2017 she joined Fourth Monkey Actor Training Company and fell in love with the art of clowning. She facilitates workshops locally alongside her position as Outreach and Education Coordinator at The Woodville Theatre and is keen to make and support new work.

The Gr@nd

The Gr@nd provides the Healthy Living Centre for Gravesham and delivers the Gifted Young Generation Programme for Young People.

We host like-minded services like Citizens Advice and Waipoua Vegan café in our centrally located base: The Old Courthouse which is open to the public 5 days a week. Our team work with community groups and individuals to help improve wellbeing, health and happiness both in the Gr@nd, Gravesham and around the county. Our ever changing and varied timetable offers something for all ages such as exercise and arts and crafts and we bring people together for friendship, fun and laughter.

Our Gifted Young Generation programme allows young people to develop skills from inspiring professionals in arts and culture, sport, construction, and business. We also support mental health and wellbeing through essential services such as 1-1 counselling. We inspire young people, raise aspirations and create positive memories.

The Woodville

Built in 1968 as part of the new Civic Centre, The Woodville has hosted dance schools, local shows and national talent. Our main auditorium is capable of seating 650 patrons across three levels or of being transformed into a flat floor space for cabaret performances for 380 seated at tables and 100 seated in the circle.

Beneath the Main Auditorium is our Studio Theatre, sponsored by O2 Gravesend. This space is used to present familiar plays and new pieces of theatre and play hosts to our monthly Comedy Club. The Studio Theatre, sponsored by O2 Gravesend can accommodate up to 180 seated patrons and has a bar at the rear of the seating area.

Cohesion Plus

Cohesion Plus is a Gravesham based community arts organisation. Their aims include promoting positive community relations in Kent, bringing communities together through the arts, public education and sport, as well as using the arts, public education and sport as a means of providing diversionary activities for young people and as a means of promoting good community relations and mutual understanding between the different communities in the area of benefit.