The Pledges to the Landscape event at Keighley Creative . Photo: Bob Smith Photography
Keighley children’s learning and creativity was celebrated this week as a major project comes to a close.
On Monday we hosted a special event to showcase the Pledges to the Landscape project, a collaboration between Keighley Creative and Yorkshire Peat Partnership.
The event welcomed lots of people who wanted to find out more about this project that uses art to teach local children about the importance of our local landscapes, plants and animals.
Naseem Darbey, artist and project lead on Pledges to the Landscape
Project leads, Naseem Darbey and Lucy Lee, welcomed children that had participated in the project and their families alongside some key members of the local community including the Principal of Keighley College, Kevin O’Hare, and the Mayor of Keighley, Councillor Gulfraz Hussain.
Attendees were also given the first viewing of a special film about the project that has been made by professional filmmaker, Finn Varney.
On Wednesday 16th October 2024, we opened our new exhibition “Nature and Imagination” but, following lots of interest, we are pleased to announce that the exhibition will continue for a month until Wednesday 13th November 2024.
Arts for Brain Health is one of Keighley Creative’s core programmes offers workshops to people that may benefit from a weekly group providing creative opportunities. The Wednesday group, runs drop-in sessions every week, from 10.30am till 12.30pm. It welcomes those that may be affected by loneliness or social isolation and offers a safe and welcoming space to anyone who may like to come along.
The project facilitators, Ailsa and Carine, recognised quickly that the work being produced by attendees showcased a range of skills and talents and that the artwork produced was worthy of its own exhibition so they asked attendees to shares their ideas on the themes of imagined outdoor spaces and personal maps and journeys. Many attendees of the Wednesday group submitted work illustrating what nature means to them and the “Nature and Imagination” exhibition was born.
The exhibition also features artwork made in Keighley Creative’s sessions at the Airedale Centre for Mental Health.
Artwork created by people from the Airedale Centre for Mental Health
The opening event welcomed lots of different people from around the Keighley and Bradford district and the exhibition has now been extended to open on:
Mondays from 10am till 12.30pm Wednesdays from 10am till 4pm Until Wednesday 13th November 2024
There is no cost to attend and no booking required.
This event has been made possible by Bradford Council Mental Wellbeing Fund.
Come along and enjoy this varied and thought-provoking exhibition and find out more about Keighley Creative’s Arts for Brain Health programme.
For more information please email ailsa@keighleycreative.org or call/text Ailsa on 07423 154855.
Local primary schools have recently taken part in a project educating children about the importance of our peatlands and the latest school to take part was Riddlesden St. Mary’s.
The children were invited to take part in the Pledges to the Landscape project, a classroom programme using art and mark making to engage children, which has been designed by arts charity, Keighley Creative, working alongside the Yorkshire Peat Partnership and the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.
The project is designed to help children to get creative and to help educate them about the environment around them and particularly the importance of Yorkshire’s peat bogs, their plants and wildlife.
Each class was gifted their own “bog in a box” kit containing high quality drawing materials and hand-lenses to help the children observe and document the growth of their own micro-bog.
The workshops have been designed and delivered by local artist, Naseem Darbey, who visited numerous local schools and helped them create their own classroom “bog”. She encouraged the pupils to be inspired by the plants that grow in the bog and to use their drawing skills to record what they had learnt.
Artist, Naseem Darbey. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
The children were given challenges to help them connect with the bog and to improve their drawing techniques using mark-making, to help them get to know the drawing materials and using touch drawing to develop their senses and record texture.
As Naseem explained: “We challenged the pupils to try new ways of drawing. For example, we encouraged them to draw without looking at the paper, which is tricky but it’s brilliant for developing hand-eye co-ordination. We also got them to draw with their other hand to take the preciousness and worry of a perfect drawing away, and to try drawing using a continuous line taking their drawing materials for a fast, spontaneous walk across the paper!”
The children all made their own ‘Pledges to the Landscape’, working together to explore, champion and protect our important doorstep superhero wetlands!
Spokesperson from the Yorkshire Peat Partnership, Lucy Lee, said: “Although the word “bog” may sound ugly, these unique landscapes and their plants can be truly beautiful and are critical to the preservation of our natural environment. It’s important that we all learn about how important they are and we are keen to get children involved from as young an age as possible.”
Lucy Lee from the Yorkshire Peat Partnership
Naseem said: “The children that have been involved in the project loved getting dirty and engaging directly with a bog in the comfort of their classroom. From there we taught them about the importance of the landscapes around them and how their preservation is essential. We looked at the past, present and future of these environments in order to help the children understand how they work. They documented the peatbogs using drawing materials and created some beautiful art in the process.”
Laura Woodcock, a Year 5 teacher at the school said: “It has been a truly inspirational experience. We absolutely adored it!”
The sessions are also being run at other primary schools around Keighley such as Worth Valley, Merlin Top, Eastwood, Holycroft and Victoria.
Other Keighley families also will be given the opportunity to join in with similar drawing activities as well as story writing, clay modelling and painting at the Pledges to the Landscape celebration event on Saturday 10th August 2024 in Cliffe Castle Park. And everyone is welcome to come and join in the fun and get stuck in, no matter what your age or ability.
For more information on your local peatlands, please contact the Yorkshire Peat Partnership. For more information on arts and crafts workshop offerings from Keighley Creative, please email admin@keighleycreative.org
Last Saturday 29th June 2024, a group of local people set off as part of Otley Walking Festival to draw the bog and associated wildlife of Denton Estate moorland near Ilkley.
Led by local artist, Naseem Darbey, and Yorkshire Peatland Partnership (YPP) expert, Lucy Lee, the group of 10 spent the day on the moor absorbing the landscape, learning about the bog and documenting it through art.
Naseem leading a drawing group on Denton Moor
The project has been titled Bog in a Drawing Box as participants are provided with a specially designed box with a host of drawing materials to allow them to illustrate the moorland, it’s plants and animals.
The project has been funded by the Yorkshire Peatland Partnership with the aim of encouraging attendees to think and learn about how society and the natural environment affect each other, to value peatlands for their own sake and for the benefits they provide and benefit from peatlands (recreation/health/wellbeing) and to take action to protect our peatlands.
Participant soaking up the landscape, literally!
By drawing the bog and it’s botany, the aim was to inspire the artists to get involved in restoring and protecting their local peatlands and highlight how important it is for wildlife, recreation, as a carbon store, flood protection and water security.
The project has also been supported by The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Otley Walking Festival, Nidderdale National Landscape, Denton Estate and the Wharfedale Naturalists Society.
For more information on the Bog in a Drawing Box project or our future collaborative projects with the YPP, please email naseem@keighleycreative.org
DEADLINE EXTENDED! Call-out for Keighley artists! Would you like to provide creative content for our Engineering and Arts Explorations project?
A new project has recently been launched in Keighley. Local engineer and STEM Ambassador, Alisha Bell, supported by The Leap organisations is on the hunt for local artists to engage the next generation of engineers.
Alisha is a passionate young female engineer at the heart of local manufacturing having worked for Teconnex for over 5 years and now working for Byworth Boilers.
With this project she is seeking creative contributions from artists, asking them to reimagine the images behind engineering and helping to celebrate Keighley’s manufacturing industry.
Therefore we are asking local artists to submit their ideas for artwork. The artwork should be designed to engage the local community with engineering and helping people see the manufacturing industry from a new perspective. The target audience is specifically the younger generation and women.
We are asking for artists ideally in and around Keighley to apply by doing a quick annotated sketch of their ideas and emailing it to alisha.bell@live.co.uk before 1st July 2024. 7th July 2024.
The team will then choose up to 10 artists who will be commissioned to turn their ideas into a final piece of artwork at A2 size that will be put on public display. This is an exciting and PAID opportunity and each successful application will be commissioned £50.
All successful entries will be displayed at our Engineering and Arts Exploration event at Keighley Creative on Cooke Lane on Saturday 24th August 2024, 10am till 4pm. Also the chosen pieces may be exhibited again publicly after this event in other settings but you will be informed and asked about this prior to other exhibitions.
The preference will be for the chosen artists and engineering to be associated with Keighley.
This project is being supported by The Leap in partnership with Keighley Creative, Arts Council England, Bradford Council and Creative Place Partners.
Deadline for applications is 7th July 2024. Please apply by emailing a sketch of your ideas directly to Alisha Bell at alisha.bell@live.co.uk
Keighley Asda store manager Mark Corps, right, joins Keighley Creative arts and heritage officer Lauren Kelly, front left, and representatives from organisations involved in the Open Door project handing out copies of Open Door at the Bingley Street supermarket
A community publication designed by Keighley Creative with input from numerous local organisations opens door to help during cost-of-living crisis.
Keighley community organisations have come together to help people struggling in the cost-of-living crisis.
Arts charity Keighley Creative has produced a newspaper-style guide with pointers to where to get support, in an easy-to-read format.
Open Door also contains healthy recipes to feed four people with costs as low as 72p per person. The publication is being distributed throughout the local area, with team members handing out copies at Asda and Morrisons supermarkets, and is available at community centres.
The Open Door newspaper produced by community groups contains useful phone numbers and cheap, easily and healthy recipes. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
It has information for Keighley folk on getting advice on a range of subjects including debt management, mental health, benefits, food, immigration, warmth, health and wellbeing, form filling, safe spaces and addiction.
The project has brought people together to create one large network of organisations including Keighley Creative, Highfield Community Association, Keighley Healthy Living, Salvation Army, Keighley Pathways, Worth Valley Food Bank, Eden Community Association, Good Food Shop, Bangladeshi Community Association, Sangat Centre, Hainworth Wood Community Association and the Keighley Association for Women and Children Centre.
Aimee Grundell, who led the production of the paper, said: “As the cost-of-living crisis continues, we became increasingly aware that a lot of support services that were promoted were either national or Bradford focused. Phone numbers for urgent help often put people through to call centres or to people that were quite removed from Keighley. We wanted to help by providing a friendly hello and clear information on how to directly find support within town itself. There are lots of resources and helpful people in Keighley, it’s just knowing how to access them.”
Aimee Grundell led the production of Open Door. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
All the contact links are local 01535 landline numbers.
Many of the people providing support services in Keighley have themselves experienced poverty and the newspaper tells some of their inspirational stories. One contributor, Rachel, who now works for the Salvation Army, in the past had to contact local organisations herself when her family were struggling to make ends meet and she now uses those experiences to help others.
Open Door includes cheap, healthy and easy recipes created by Keighley Healthy Living and based on foodbank staples, to help struggling families put an affordable but delicious meal on the table. It gives guidance to those that would like to improve their mental health with free resources. It features some fun activities for children and features illustrations from local artist Rebecca Buchanan and graphic design by Lee Goater. Bob Smith provided photography.
The Open Door newspaper produced by community groups is available from ASDA Keighley. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
Aimee Grundell added: “Keighley organisations have tried to take a different approach to supporting the community and hopefully we can help ensure that local people don’t encounter closed doors or have their time wasted.”
Asda’s Keighley store manager Mark Corps said: “We’re happy to support this free publication created by local groups for our customers and townsfolk. They’re available in Asda Keighley to pick up near our customer service desk.”
For more information or to receive a copy of the Open Door newspaper, please email admin@keighleycreative.org or grab a copy from Asda.
The project has been funded by some of the organisations involved, along with Bradford Council, Citizens Advice, Department of Work and Pensions, Feeding Bradford and Keighley, The Healthy Growth Initiative, JAMES Project and Keighley area co-ordinators office.
Riaz Meer, who has been appointed Kala Sangam's executive director seconded to Keighley Creative. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
Following a competitive recruitment process, Riaz Meer, one of the founders of Keighley Arts and Film Festival, will take up a post leading creative arts in the town over the next two years.
The experienced film and television editor will oversee Keighley Creative’s organisational development and transition to a permanent base. His brief will include working with East Street Arts, which is due to take over the lease of the former Sunwin House building on Hanover Street, with Keighley Creative as its tenant from 2026.
Riaz will work to build relationships with organisations including Bradford Council, Keighley Town Council, Keighley Business Improvement District, Bradford 2025, and the Towns Fund board and its long-term plan for the town. He will also develop a fundraising strategy for the organisation that secures its long-term future.
An important part of the role is to ensure Keighley Creative has a sustainable plan for its development. Riaz was previously a trustee of the charity for more than four years. In 2018, he was instrumental in setting up Keighley Creative Space, which became the current charity in 2020. He is currently vice-chair of the Media Reform Coalition and is active in the broadcasting and entertainments union Bectu.
Riaz Meer, who has been appointed Kala Sangam’s executive director seconded to Keighley Creative. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
He said: “I’m thrilled to join the team at Keighley Creative. There really is no place like Keighley, and no arts organisation quite like Keighley Creative. I’ve been involved as a trustee in trying to increase arts provision for the people of Keighley. I’m delighted to now step up and play a more active role in the town.
“The next two years offer an amazing set of challenges and opportunities. Keighley must and will play a vital part in Bradford’s Capital of Culture 2025. At the same time, we will see the complete renovation of Sunwin House and the establishment of a permanent home for Keighley Creative. These are once-in-a-generation opportunities and for the sake of the people of Keighley we must seize them.
“There is no other arts organisation I would consider throwing my lot in with. I am sure there will be testing times ahead, but we have the expertise of East Street Arts, Bradford Council, Bradford 2025 and Kala Sangam to draw on. And I also have the support of our fantastic team of staff and our energetic board of trustees.
“For me, this is the right time and Keighley Creative is the right place.”
The executive director post has been funded by major Bradford arts organisation Kala Sangam through their Cultural Development Fund award from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. The post is the second Kala Sangam appointment to be seconded to Keighley Creative. In April, Lauren Kelly began working as Arts and Heritage Officer with the charity.
Alex Croft, creative director of Kala Sangam, said: “I am so pleased that we’ve been able to appoint such an exceptional candidate to the role of executive director at Keighley Creative. Our Cultural Development Fund project is aiming to make a real difference across Bradford district over the next two years, and a major priority has always been supporting Keighley to ensure arts and cultural provision is protected and grown in the town. I think we’re in safe hands with Riaz at the helm!”
Keighley Creative are always looking out for new volunteers to join our fab team.
There is no financial commitment and you can do as much or as little as you want and you can tell us what roles you’re interested in. And you don’t have to be “arty”!
Volunteering can include being a trustee, supporter or participant and it offers a great opportunity to add to your skills and experience as you get to:
Meet new people
Bring something positive to Keighley
Learn new skills
Get creative
Pass on skills and expertise to others
Get experience for your CV or UCAS form
Develop a new hobby or existing hobby
HAVE FUN!
Volunteers can help us with lots of different tasks including setting up venues, putting up decorations and signage, loading and unloading materials, meeting and greeting visitors, taking care of the space, helping everyone have the best experience, selling merchandise or supporting with set up and take down.
Jane Fielder, Naseem Darbey, Jon Britten, Anji Timlin, Leonie Briggs and Sean Jukes will host open studio sessions, during which visitors can chat with the artists and see what they are creating from their base at Keighley Creative.
Local creative businesses taking part in the Makers Faire include Miss Hue Designs, selling polymer clay jewellery. Also on offer will be miniature wildlife paintings and cards by Anna Gouws Artworks; fragranced bath, body and home products by Magnificents and Soaps; illustration and print design by Olivia Brearley; cyanotype prints and photographs by Keighley Photo Hub; glass and craft work by Twiggy Curley Creations; alternative eclectic and unusual hand-crafted home decor and art by Kindred Bizarre; laser-cut earrings and stickers by Curiously Colourful; and handmade natural crystal and gemstone jewellery by LaLa Designs.
Since we moved into our new home next to the Airedale Shopping Centre at the end of last year, there has been a lot of interest from people in what goes on at our base.
We have some amazingly talented artists in our studios, so this event will give the people of Keighley the chance to see their work and how they create it.
We also support local creatives, and the Makers Faire will bring several together under one roof where visitors can browse and buy some interesting and original pieces, while at the same time helping independent businesses.
Some of the Keighley Creative team at the K-Town Shopper event. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
Keighley Creative is on the look out for a new Chairperson, and new Trustees to join our charitable board in September 2023.
For an informal discussion about the roles and to learn more about this exciting opportunity please see the document attached, or come along for a chat at Keighley Creative. We’re hosting two drop-in sessions for you to meet some of our Trustees, find out more about us, and discuss what skills, experience, and energy you want to bring to our charitable work:
WHERE? 3-7 Cooke Lane, Keighley, BD21 3PF (next to Farmfoods and Airedale Shopping Centre)
WHEN?
Thursday, 6th July, 5:30pm-7:30pm
Saturday, 8th July, 10:30am-11:30am
Applications by CV with a supporting statement: Please let us know why you are applying, and the skills and experience you will bring to the role.
