Creative Scene was set up as one of Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places projects to bring world-class arts and cultural activities to Dewsbury, Mirfield, Cleckheaton, Batley and Heckmondwike.
Since 2014, we have welcomed over 140,00 people to more than 141 events in the places where they live, work, gather and socialise in and around Dewsbury, Batley, Mirfield, Cleckheaton and Heckmondwike.
We’re an action research project, which means that we embrace experimentation, making mistakes, reflecting, listening and learning. But we also want to share our knowledge with the rest of the industry; we want to connect to national and international conversations about arts engagement, cultural regeneration of towns and communities taking the lead in creating their future.
As a Creative People and Places project, our approach has always been to engage those who wouldn’t normally go to a gallery or the theatre, and bring arts, creativity and events to the places where people live, work, shop and play. We also believe that we have a wealth of talent in our towns, and we want to help those people reach their full potential. We know the people in our towns to take the lead, take part and make things happen.
We’ve been really successful in doing this, and want it to continue. But we also want to grow our offer and involve more people in our decision-making.
In the next couple of years, we will be setting up a new organisation to take the work we have already done further. We want to create a forward-facing and innovative arts agency for action research and creative development.
In doing this, we want this part of West Yorkshire to be known as a place where the people here create and commission fantastic and accessible arts and cultural activities. We want stories with universal themes to be drawn out from our towns, communities, schools, pubs, parks and memories. We want to create a vibrant acts ecology that will shape the future of our towns.
We want art to be a part of everyday life.