The Unlonely City: Major New Arts Programme Disrupting Loneliness
The Unlonely City is an experimental arts and research programme disrupting loneliness by nurturing moments of solidarity, surprise and laughter in UK cities. It aims to address loneliness in Liverpool, Peterborough and Southend over 10 years through grass-roots creative initiatives (e.g. wellbeing groups, celebrations, artistic commissions) that increase community power and connection.
The programme was initiated by Metal, a company founded in 2002 that aims to inspire social change through art and creativity. What makes Metal unusual is working deeply within communities of Picton, Liverpool (since 2004); Southend (since 2007); and Peterborough (since 2011), as well as nationally and internationally.
To have the greatest impact across our cities, our ethos is ‘collaboration over competition’ and our partners range from local authorities to NHS providers and community organisations like Asylum Link, The Kite Trust (working with LGBTQ+ youth), and Peterborough Refugee and Asylum Community Association. This collaborative approach has led to programmes like Creative Breaktime, giving teachers time away from rigid planning structures; Working Artist Weeks, exploring what can be learned about belonging when global majority children, caregivers and artists engage equally in art spaces; and The Citizens in Power Network, involving more people in cultural decision-making where they live.
The Unlonely City is the first time Metal is working across Liverpool, Peterborough and Southend on a single issue – one that deeply affects these places and is exacerbated by an intersection of inequalities. The programme has three phases across arts, health, local government and charity sectors. The framework will evolve in response to community need and evaluation, and we are pleased to share it at this early stage.
Phase 1: Community responses to loneliness
The pilot phase of The Unlonely City is grounded in Metal’s aim to increase community power in Liverpool, Peterborough and Southend through creativity. Artist, theatre-writer and performer Luca Rutherford is dreaming up a new kind of citizens assembly, a special gathering, to gain knowledge from a cross-section of residents about the ways people feel close to others and themselves, and the ways they feel alone in the three cities in spring 2025. The knowledge shared in the gatherings and the community priorities about loneliness – alongside existing research and data – will inform The Unlonely City’s next phase.
Phase 2: Social action programmes
In the second phase of The Unlonely City, communities and the artists who are an important part of those communities will make key choices about artistic commissions, projects and perhaps even new organisations needed to tackle the most pressing concerns around loneliness in each city. By the end of the first three years there will be up to nine creative initiatives in each city designed to bring people together. These new initiatives will collaborate across charity, health, community and government sectors in Liverpool, Peterborough and Southend.
This way of supporting new initiatives is part of Metal’s methodology and we’ve been part of the founding journey for important programmes like The Other MA (TOMA), which supports people facing barriers to ‘the art world’; Peterborough Pride; and Estuary Festival, an interdisciplinary arts festival spanning Essex and Kent. The Unlonely City is the first time we’ll do this across the three cities building research and knowledge at a national scale.
Phase 3: Mass-participation and knowledge sharing
The final phase of the programme will publicly share the knowledge gained from working deeply with communities and artists across three geographically and demographically different cities to tackle loneliness. An artist will develop a mass-participation event showing how feelings of, and attitudes towards, loneliness change over time in our places. We expect it to be a joyful invitation to come together and connect.
We are at the beginning of this long-term and large-scale programme and invite collaborators so please get in touch if you are a research or evaluation organisation, charity, or community company interested joining us.
Biography
Susie Thornberry, Artistic Director & CEO, Metal
Susie is a director, producer and writer. She is currently Artistic Director and CEO at Metal, which inspires change through art and creativity; a trustee of Battersea Arts Centre; a Commissioner of Historic England; and a member of English Heritage’s London Blue Plaques Panel. She has worked across the arts including at Artichoke; The Tower of London; The Gate Theatre; and Imperial War Museums, where she was director of public engagement. As a writer, she received a London Writers Award and was shortlisted for the Wasafiri New Writing Prize.
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