Tempo Arts encourages and facilitates access to and participation in contemporary art projects

"Art is a guarantee of sanity" Louise Bourgeois

Tempo Arts organises publicly engaged contemporary visual arts, artists’ film & video, performance and sound projects in the UK and internationally. We work with emerging and established critically engaged artists supporting their research and professional development through the creation of new site-specific work which both engages and is presented to a range of arts audiences.

Community empowerment is at the core of our projects and we facilitate creative opportunities with people who may have limited access and exposure to high quality and innovative cultural activities which encourage and maintain transferable skills.

Many of our projects involve people who live in areas of deprivation or who have challenging life situations. We work in an inclusive way to ensure that the people engaging in the activities shape their direction and outputs, bringing their own experiences and interests to create relevant exhibitions and events with artists. In doing so, our projects build confidence and self-worth, promoting aspiration within individuals and communities.

We are committed to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. This is reflected in our governing board and is at the core of all our activities and their impacts with participants, audiences, contracted artists/ creatives, programming partners and service deliverers.

We work flexibly with a range of public, private and community based organisational partners, initiating and delivering projects; partnering organisations to ensure high quality and appropriate artistic and public engagement programmes; project managing arts projects on behalf of others.

We have a long standing commitment to local audiences in Hastings and St Leonards, where we are based, through artists’ interventions outdoors at The SPACE in St Leonards-on-Sea which encourages the production of work informed by its location, place-specificity and the town’s unique architectural heritage.

To support artists’ practice, we have developed working partnerships with organisations such as Espace 36, an arts association and project space in Saint-Omer, France. This cross-border collaboration has presented French artists’ work in Hastings and St Leonards and opportunities for South East based artists to create new works in France.