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About Croydon Makers & Creators
✧˖ About Croydon Makers & Creators
Croydon Makers & Creators is Croydon's community voice for creatives.
We were set up following Croydon’s London Borough of Culture year in 2023-24 with the goal of ensuring our creative creative community has what it needs to thrive long-term.
CMC is a membership organisation - what we do is created for, and by our members.
We support our members through connecting, upskilling, signposting & sharing.
This work is overseen by four CoDirectors, who were voted in by our community.
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Everything we do is based on these core values;
Local: We're focused on what culture means to our hometown of Croydon.
Collaborative: We support each other to work together in collaboration.
Transparent: We operate with transparent budgets and decision-making.
High quality: we advocate for high-quality arts in all its forms.
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We focus on work which supports:
Connecting
Creating opportunities for creatives to meet, be together & collaborate.
Sharing
Sharing resources, knowledge and solidarity to ensure creativity has what it needs to survive & thrive.
Signposting
Ensuring our community know about each other, events & opportunities.
Upskilling
Supporting our community to collectively develop skills we need to succeed & innovate.
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Quarterly Gatherings
Opportunity to spend time together was the key thing our community wanted. Gatherings aim to nurture connection, trust, sharing, collaboration & solidarity within an informal environment.
We also commission members to shape, showcase and lead activity at Gatherings.
Boring Club
If the thought of taxes make you tremble, budgets break you down or funding fills you with fear, Boring Club is here! Boring Club is a monthly meetup every 3rd Monday morning, for members to get stuff done in solidarity.
Members’ Resources & Support
Clash Calendar
To map & share cultural activity, helping coordinate and amplify Croydon’s creative offer.
Message Board
A digital space to facilitate connection & resource sharing.
Visibility
Members are showcased on our socials & form part of our network for paid opportunities
Advocacy
Collective Voice
We act as an independent collective voice for the sector to represent local creative’s needs & concerns.
Collective Action
As a membership, we can take coordinated action to support each other and make sure we are supported.
Research
We undertake research to support our advocacy positions and help shape the change we want to see.
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Note we all work part time (equivalent to only half a full time role in total!), so please allow a week for us to get back to you.
It’s useful it you let us know if you’re trying to reach a specific CoDirector too. Here’s what we each focus on:
Katia: Audiences & accessibility, marketing, advocacy.
Katie: Gatherings & Boring Club
Honey: Admin, invoices, Clash Calendar & memberships.
B: Research & development, fundraising.
Find more about us and what we do below.
Our timeline
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Our timeline ✧˖
Croydon’s London Borough of Culture takes place.
Local creatives began to ask - what happens after? How can we make sure there’s a legacy from all of this activity?
2023
Our community began to come together to research this question, funded by Arts Council England.
The community voted in our leadership to oversee this. Originally a more traditional position, the four applicants successfully proposed a CoDirectorship model and became CMC’s CoDirectors.
What did we want to happen and what sort of organisation should we be?
We visited spaces, investigated business models, did surveys and identified gaps.
The membership voted to become a CIC.
2024-25
2025
Our CIC was registered.
We applied for funding whilst putting on lower-scale events to keep momentum going.
2026
We finally got word our funding was successful and began full scale activity!
Who we are
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Who we are ✧˖
CMC is members-led, with four local CoDirectors who were voted in by our community in 2024.
CMC currently has 4 Co-Directors who focus on different areas.
Please note the CMC team run everything for CMC on around 2 days per month each - approximately half a full time role!
Please allow time for a response, but don’t be afraid to chase us up if you think we’ve missed your query.
Honey Gabriel - Operations & Finance
What I do:
All the admin to keep CMC running;
Admin like managing memberships & member data, enquiries, bookings, paying invoices etc.
Manages CMC’s budget, payments and financial and administrative compliance (e.g. access fund, artist payments).
Ensures targets and deadlines are being met.
Katie Hurley - Programme
What I do:
Lead the planning, design and delivery of the project members’ programme;
Quarterly Gatherings.
Boring Club, supporting attendee audiences, evaluation & growth.
Cocreating the programme development strategy with members, ensuring it reflects the priorities and interests of our community.
Katia Del Rio Smith -
Audiences & Advocacy
What I do:
Engage with different groups and creative communities across Croydon to ensure we’re inclusive & grow our membership and reach.
Ensure accessibility across what we do.
Oversee the marketing plan & member communications, implemented by our Outreach & Marketing Assistant.
Oversee advocacy activity on behalf of members.
B Atherton -
Research & Development
What I do:
Support the development of a practical long-term organisational plan with a focus on shared resources, connectivity & solidarity for Croydon creatives:
Design and facilitate participatory creative research with members which threads across full programme & audiences.
Develop strategic partnerships.
Research, develop & implement CMC’s funding model.