Funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, the ‘I Come From’ project is the debut project from community arts organisation, Nottingham C.A.N (Community Arts Network). Inspired by the poem ‘Where I Come From’ by Elizabeth Brewster the project worked in partnership with Rising Issue magazine and illustrator Raphicdesign, to bring together a range of diverse participants, exploring identity, people and place through Poetry and producing a trilogy of printed anthologies.

The project began with a range of online workshops facilitated by Poetry Specialists exploring the themes of ‘Race & Immigration’, ‘Gender & Sexuality’ and ‘Mental Health’. Supporting individuals to reach their creative potential, we shared stories, held discussions around specific questions within our themes and set a range of creative writing challenges that encouraged Poets of all ages and abilities to develop their creative writing skills. The final session saw participants working with an illustrator; producing live, visualisation of the poetry as it was performed, that would contribute to the anthology trilogy. This process helped our participants to build confidence in their performance skills and gave the Poets a feel for how their work would be interpreted by wider audiences.

In terms of project legacy, the anthologies, containing our participants’ poetry and illustrations will act as a stimulus to provide community groups and educational institutes with a toolkit to encourage conversations within the wider community and attempt to break down misconceptions and breakdown barriers of the issues raised within the workshops. As well as being taken on a series of roadshow events around Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire, the work has been showcased at a celebration and launch event, and a selection of poems were filmed and can be accessed on our youtube playlist via a QR code at the back of this anthology.