Backlit is an LQBTQ+ and female/neurodivergent-led independent public gallery and creative studio space, whose purpose is to support, develop, showcase and promote early-career artists based in Nottingham, through a series of artistic and professional development opportunities.
The grant will be used towards the cost of the studio’s arts and mental health project costs, to support the studio’s four key areas of focus: mental health, digital, environment, and EDI, based on the interests and needs of their artist community and the city-wide priorities for residents.
Alongside their four areas of focus, the studios actively contribute to the regional creative economy to help springboard careers in the arts by hosting major exhibitions across their galleries, offering work experience opportunities and new, paid-for artist commissions.
Speaking of their ongoing project, Suzanne Golden, co-director at BACKLIT, said:
“BACKLIT have recently developed a text-based report on how mental health impacts creative practitioners and exploring ways that the arts sector can best support. Mental health is a challenging topic, but by providing a visual format that is accessible to more people, for example, in an animation or on a gaming platform, can prove to be more helpful than text as has a wider reach.
“We will use the funds kindly donated by The Duncan & Toplis Foundation towards the development of the visual platform to help people manage their mental health. This will help so many people on so many levels as we can distribute digitally.
“We are very grateful to Duncan & Toplis Foundation for their funds towards BACKLIT's arts and mental health work.”
Duncan & Toplis director, and trustee at the Duncan & Toplis Foundation, Theo Banos, said
“One of the aims of the Foundation is to support organisations in our regions who have comparable values with the Duncan & Toplis group. As a cultural organisation whose core focus is equality, inclusion, mental health and environmental issues, we’re delighted to extend our support to BACKLIT. We love the idea of an innovative, interactive digital report, and we wish them the very best of luck in their endeavours”.
You can read more about BACKLIT and ways in which you can support them here.
