Art Reach

A brand to connect cultures through extraordinary art.

Set up in the late 1990’s Art Reach started life as an arts fundraiser for major capital development projects. Now in 2022 as well as still supporting organisations to secure funding through their consultancy expertise, they have established a reputation as leading festival, event and public art programmers and producers, delivering large scale arts events across Europe.

The events and art that Art Reach creates are centred around working with refugee and asylum seeking artists, with sanctuary at the heart of many of their projects. They want to elevate and support under represented artist voices in the arts and bring their work to people and communities across the UK.

Such an ambitious and bold organisation doing such important work, yet their brand just didn’t reflect this. The connection and brand presence of one of the main festivals they deliver was also lacking. Journeys International Festival is a Europe wide festival celebrating the creative voices of refugee & asylum-seeking artists.

With all of this in mind, we were appointed to work with the organisation to establish their values, clarify their purpose and create a visual identity to position them for the future.

Online workshops with the team and audiences across the country helped to understand Art Reach’s roots and importantly understand the purpose of the organisation, what makes it special, what makes it tick? From everyone we spoke to there was an inheritant desire for connection, for people and communities to come together to celebrate the power of sanctuary.

Influenced by the workshops, we helped to articulate their who, what and why, we established new values and at the core, a new purpose – Connecting cultures through extraordinary art. Art Reach connect artists to audiences, art to communities, and people to each other. In everything they do, their purpose is rooted in human experience and bringing people together to explore complex pasts, to imagine a new future and help people and communities to find their place in the artistic landscape. Art Reach believe that shared experiences of art starts conversations and helps us to understand one another better.

Impact report design
Art and culture branding

Connection is at the heart of the logo. Art Reach use art to bring people together and the logo epitomises that sense of unity. A connective and collaborative strand unifies the words, reflecting Art Reach as a platform to bring artists, communities and audiences together, breaking down barriers. As well as becoming a platform to amplify and elevate brave and under represented artist voices. The connecting strand also underpins their role in artistic and organisational growth and development.

 

Art Reach will always seek new and exciting artists and projects and art is not static, so visually the connective strand extends and flexes to represent this non linear approach.

Through the line extension, the logo then becomes a device to present messaging and bold statements with Art Reach as the foundation. The line is carried through the communication as a visual device, weaving through imagery to create depth.

Art and culture branding
Art and culture branding

The Journeys Festival International identity evolves the connective strand and sense of unity even further. The letters are unified on each line, seamlessly reflecting a journey and the idea that this shared festival experience has the power to bring people together and encourage them to share moments and stories through entertainment.

The visual language runs through all of the communications and comes to life online with an overarching new website for Art Reach. By re-purposing the site framework we also created a fresh new site for Journeys Festival International, maximising the budget by working smarter.

A detailed guideline document was collated covering everything from tone of voice to social post styling.

Festival branding
Festival branding
Festival programme
Festival branding

We worked with Altogether on a significant rebrand including a new brand and website for Art Reach, festival brand and website. Altogether were fantastic to work with, spending time getting to know us, understand the organisation and the work we do and our team. They generated exciting ideas, proposals and routes for us to explore. No request has been too big or too small for the team, their technical knowledge of both website creation and the design support we’ve received for the rebrand have been second to none. We continue to work with them for design and site updates as their response rate is exemplary, their disposition is always sunny and yes, they make us feel like we’re working on every stage, Altogether. Highly recommended."

Lorna Fulton, Creative Director, Art Reach