An abandoned Margate funfair. A mainly amateur cast - including local children, skinheads and immigrants. A giant Waste Man created by artist Antony Gormley from the detritus of a consumer society. A packed day of free arts and performance events. And a director, Penny Woolcock, with a vision to retell the Old Testament story to explore 21st-century social exclusion, race hatred, retribution and deliverance. All came together to make an innovative multi-media arts project in association with Artangel and part-funded by Arts Council England. The on-screen result, the genre-defying feature Exodus, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. But Exodus was much more than a beautifully-made morality tale about Moses in Margate. It also brought hundreds of local people together to work with each other and with professional artists on their first community arts project - an exhilarating and memorable experience for everyone involved.

Impact beyond the screen was also the hallmark of Big Art, the most ambitious public art commissioning project ever undertaken. The £2m project was launched in 2007 with a specially commissioned installation outside Channel 4's Horseferry Road headquarters, and six communities - in North Belfast, Burnley, Cardigan, East London, Sheffield and the Isle of Mull - were selected from 1400 public nominations to work with curators to commission their own public art work. The results will be seen on screen in 2008.

Making things happen both on and off-screen isn't new. Channel 4's involvement with the Turner Prize began in 1991, creating the annual showcase for contemporary British artists and the focus for public debate about modern art. Though Channel 4's sponsorship of the Prize has now come to an end, in 2007 the finalists talked about their work in Three Minute Wonders, a peak-time slot just after Channel 4 News.