LIPA Community Arts Reunion: Celebrating Legacy and Growth in one Final Snapshot Countdown

Well, that is, as they say, a wrap. It. Finito. Done, dusted and stacked on IKEA Ding Dong shelving.   The Not-the-30^th-reunion LIPA Community Arts Reunion reached its climax between the 8^th and 10^th August, with over 30 ex-graduates and staff meeting up in a flurry of drinking and eating, talking and walking, reflecting and inspecting across Liverpool. The weekend gave us a chance to produce a final snapshot for Adolonia (the anthology marking the event) which brought together our reflections on both the legacy of the Community Arts course at LIPA and its effects on us personally.  We heard about:

Personal Growth and Identity: how the course equipped us  with resilience, confidence and joy. It wasn’t just skills training; it helped you shape your identities and sense of agency. The course nurtured personal growth, self-awareness, and an enduring sense of privilege in being able to do this work.

Creativity and Artistic Identity: our identities as artists have been strengthened, with creativity seen as joyous, liberating, and essential to how we live. We celebrate the arts as both expressive and practical:  a vessel, a resource, even a survival mechanism. It’s both deeply serious and playfully irreverent.

Skills and Professional Pathways: how we’ve translated your training into diverse professional roles across health, education, social work, and youth settings with community arts practice providing as a practical toolkit for real-world impact. We’ve developed practical and relational skills: crisis management, facilitation and the ability to guide others while respecting boundaries.

Relationships and Connectivity: we see the work reinforcing the importance of human connection by building trust, valuing young people, and seeing relationships as central to practice.

Philosophy and Values: how the course instilled a values-based approach rooted in compassion, inclusivity, and respect for lived experience. Ubuntu philosophy (‘I am because we are’) ran through our reflections. Strong ethical commitments to empathy, fairness, and collective care are central to our practice.

Social and Political Impact: how we saw community arts practice as a form of activism and civic engagement:  politics not as parties and manifestos, but as everyday acts of empowerment and discourse. We’ve become attuned to wider social and political currents, using the arts to challenge, disrupt and stand for freedom and justice.

Community Development and Outreach: how we saw the practice tied to regeneration and outreach, embedding itself in communities at the most local level and working upwards.

Connection and Collaboration: how we’ve built networks that stretch across borders, finding ways to connect even digitally. LIPA became a launchpad for global and cross-cultural collaboration: and exposure to diversity has shaped an internationalist and inclusive outlook which embraces difference and learning across borders.

Overall, the course helped shape us into creative, ethical, empathetic practitioners who combine artistry with care, political awareness with positivity, and personal growth with collective responsibility. It was as much about becoming a better human as it was about becoming a better artist.  It has left behind more than a set of graduates: it has seeded a movement of practitioners who combine artistry with activism, care with creativity, and local practice with global connection. The legacy is joyful, political, and practical all at once: shaping lives, influencing sectors, and constantly fighting for its place in the world.

And finally… we sang:

As The Time Moves On

Chorus

And we’re here now, after all these years 

With our hopes and dreams and our worries and fears, 

What do we bring back to these this place 

as the time moves on, as the time moves on?

I came here to grasp the thistle

Learning samba from Lee’s gold whistle. 

I came here to the grasp of the thistle 

As the time moves on, as the time moves on.

 I came here to light some fires

 Young people’s theatre and community choirs,

I came here to light some fires 

As the time moves on, as the time moves on.

And we’re here now, after all these years 

With our hopes and dreams and our worries and fears 

What do we bring back to these this place 

as the time moves on, as the time moves on?

 I want to leave a legacy,

For people to have a community,

Along the shores of the great Mersey,

As the tide rolls on, as the tide rolls on. 

Times of frustration, moments of joy,

Out with friends, making lots of noise,

 Time for frustration, moments of joy,

as the time moves on, as the time moves on.

And we’re here now after all these years, 

With our hopes and dreams and our worries and fears,

What do we bring back to these this place

as the time moves on, as the time moves on?

I came here to change the world, 

Peace and justice,

Our power unfurled,

I came here to change the world,

as the time moves on, as the time moves on.

Our time at LIPA planted some seeds,

We spread our joy to those in need,

Our time at LIPA planted some seeds,

As the time moves on and the time moves on. 

And we’re here now, after all these years,

With our hopes and dreams and our worries and fears,

What do we bring back to these this place

as the time moves on, as the time moves on?

As the time moves on.

Or, in the true spirit of the Not-the-30th reunion, this is Not-the-End but just a temporary pause before we resume our collective endeavours, collectively. I’ve seen so much passion, joy, skill, intelligence and expertise in the room and online over the last 3 days, I’m thinking ‘what next?’ for us all and the people and communities we are part of? 

Because there will be – there has to be – something else, somewhere, somehow.

‘Community Arts’ may have reached an end in the institution where we all met; but communities and relationships will never end, the power of the arts to transform lives is a constant in this ever changing world and there will always be people like us to catalyse those transformations.