First we were the North East Cultural Diversity Arts Forum (or NECDAF for short) - but of course that was far too long, people confused us with NORDAF, thought we were called NECTAR etc etc.

It was time for a change.

Those of you that have worked with us recently will have seen we have been calling ourselves NECDAF Intercultural Arts.  There were 2 motives behind this; firstly we did have a core group of users that knew us as NECDAF, knew what we did, what it stood for, and we didn't want to alienate them; secondly we fell in love with the concept of INTERculturalism, and thought it really represented what kind of work we want to be doing.  We want to work TOGETHER to bring new shows and new collaborations to new audiences.

At a marketing seminar I told one of the lecturers the name of our organisation, and quick as a flash she said "drop the NECDAF - it's not what you do!"  After some debate around the board room table, we are now Intercultural Arts - the North East Cultural Diversity Arts Forum. (First part big, second part little)

We have a new website, created entirely with open source software - which means it is all free, we'd be happy to tell you where to get all bits from! - and we will be launching a contest in the coming months for a new logo - open to anyone who can put pencil to paper (or images on a pc!).

How best to display all of our information on the website has been a bit problematic - especially as we didn't want any 'downtime', but we think we've come up with a pretty good, and USABLE site.

As ever, we are open to comments and suggestions.

Richard Neville

Project Coordinator