Marking the 100 year anniversary of suffrage and the Representation of the People Act in 1918, the residency celebrated the rich feminist heritage of Barking and Dagenham, exploring the female heroes that have come to define the borough’s past and present - and boldly imagining how its young people will go on to define its future and become the change makers of tomorrow.

Working with different classes from Sydney Russell School for a whole academic year, artists/companies including leading theatre company Complicite, beatboxer Bellatrix and award-winning filmmaker Eelyn Lee, worked with students and teaching staff at the school to deliver an ambitious and wide-ranging programme of creative projects.

During the recent world-wide women’s marches, many young girls had their first experience of campaigning and protest, some of them learning for the first time about the continued fight for gender equality, how it is relevant to their lives, and that it's not something relegated to the past.

Given this, and inspired by the Girlguiding Girls Attitudes survey, Girls can, do and will was a creative and participatory event for Brownies and Guides, who worked with a range of artists, musicians, writers, and performers at the Barbican Centre. They explored how art and culture can influence, affect and enhance the cause for gender equality and talk about what matters to them. Afterwards they undertook their own social action projects and received a new Girlguiding London & South East England and Barbican badge designed by a leading artist.

Who makes and consumes art? Who works in the arts? How do they get in, and get on? 
 
These questions formed the basis of a research project led by sociologists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Sheffield, investigating artistic, workforce and audience inequalities within the creative economy and arts & cultural sector. 

The Barbican partnered with Create London and Arts Emergency to share the outcome of these investigations with the sector and wider public – through an artist commission for our public spaces and by sharing a series of concise working papers published online. 

Panic! 2018 was a continuation of a nationwide survey and events programme in 2015. 

42 young creatives from London, Los Angeles, Gateshead, Scotland and Bristol have created Tuning into Change: A Youth Manifesto for the Arts. 

A Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning project, the Manifesto was launched on 4 May at an open rehearsal in the Barbican featuring world-renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel, members of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s 2018 Barbican residency. 

Tuning into Change brought young creatives together at workshops over a period of six months to determine what the arts can offer young people and the role that young artists can play to create lasting change in our uncertain world. The young people's 14-point Manifesto and accompanying 89 page publication explores how young people can effect change at different levels, from the individual to the global across society through the arts.

Sky Arts launched Art 50 in partnership with the Barbican, Sage Gateshead and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, to support and commission new work that engages with ideas around our current and future national identity. Current projects supported by Art 50 include:

• Art 50: Barbican Public Spaces Commission
• Unexploded Ordnances (UXO)
• Youth Manifesto Project: Imagining the arts centre of the future
• Told By an Idiot: Let Me Play the Lion Too: a two-week residency in The Pit where twelve performers, six of whom had a disability, devised a new piece of performance tackling the lack of diversity on the stage.