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Are you a Keighley-based freelance creative looking for more paid opportunities?

We’re looking for artists, crafters and makers from Keighley who can run public, drop-in workshops around town. These will be mostly for children and families, but may expand to adults too.

These will be action packed days that will give you the chance to meet fellow creatives, local businesses and of course the brilliant people of Keighley!Activity days like this are busy, so you will need to be a well organised person who enjoys a challenge and who is able to make these sessions safe, friendly and above all, fun!

You will also need to have your own ideas for the workshops – making something unusual or something your visitors can take away with them always goes down well!

Ideally, you will also already have an active DBS check but please still get in touch if you meet all the other criteria.

In the first instance, we’re looking for people to run workshop days that will be managed by Keighley Creative and funded by Keighley Town Council (to be in the running for this, please get in touch by 5pm on Friday, 20th of May) but are also looking to create a long term database of Keighley-based workshop facilitators for future opportunities.

To register your interest, please return the form below to admin@keighleycreative.org

We are very excited to introduce you to our new Festival and Events Director, Madeleine O’Reilly and coordinator, Cathryn Murray!

For the next two years, Madeleine and Cathryn will plan and develop our annual Keighley Arts & Film Festival, along with a full programme of other events.

Having co-founded Hull’s Assemble Fest in 2013 and with an impressive background in theatre and community arts, Madeleine is the perfect woman for the job, as is Cathryn with her experience developing community workshops.

Madeleine says: “Keighley is such an exciting place, and I really love the spirit of Keighley Creative. I’m passionate about finding and creating platforms for local artists and celebrating places, and there are so many possibilities here.

I’ve got loads of ideas. But I want to make sure they’re in tune with people here. I’m really hoping to talk to as many people as possible, find out what people are interested in; find out what people want to see, and also talk to artists as well because there are so many ideas that are already here.

I’m just really excited to start.”

Look out for more announcements about the Keighley Arts and Film Festival over the next few months!

The Trustees of Keighley Creative, an arts, creativity and cultural charity based in central Keighley, are recruiting for two new posts to plan, deliver and evaluate our annual Keighley Arts and Film Festival (KAFF) and other related events throughout the year.

The two posts, a Festival and Events Director and a Festival and Events
Coordinator, are funded for two years, with a possibility of two further years extension. The post-holders will be an important part of our well respected and fast- growing organisation and join our existing group of committed creative leads.

You will be joining Keighley Creative at a very exciting time for the organisation overall as we move forward with a new building and other expansion plans. We are also ambitious to grow KAFF over the next four years and to increase its profile locally, district wide and nationally.

For full details please contact fiona@keighleycreative.org
For an informal discussion please contact jan@keighleycreative.org

Closing date for applications: 28th February 2022
Interviews will be held on 7th March 2022

We will send out interview requests to short-listed applicants by 2nd March 2022

Recognise this spot? Well get ready for a Summer Surprise!

As a part of Summer Unlocked (a Bradford Council funded outdoor events programme happening in the district this summer), we are working with a group of artists and creatives to transform this amazing location. Why? Because the space is really interesting. The brutalist architecture inspires us… as do the Hanover Street trees… And we’ve been looking for an excuse to talk to the people who use it for a while now, so this is perfect!

Join us as we create a WOW moment for the town this summer!

Watch this space… more news shortly 🙂

We just want to say a massive CONGRATULATIONS to everyone who has been a part of Keighley’s successful bid to the government to secure a substantial amount of financial investment into our town. The projects that make this bid up look brilliant, and Keighley Creative is one of them! Such exciting times ahead! We will keep everyone posted as we find out more. Onwards and upwards Keighley, let’s show the world just how incredibly creative we are 🙂

https://www.keighleynews.co.uk/news/19357254.33-6-million-keighley-a-game-changer/

Image featured is a photograph of the story our studio holder, Letty McHugh wrote about the town and beyond- Standing in History.

It has been a while (and sorry if you have enquired about a studio with us in the last few months- we decided not to take on anyone new until we can open up more fully post Lockdown 1… Lockdown 2… you guessed it- Lockdown 3!) but we are now on with building some more studios! Yippee!

As soon as we can say more we will, but in the meantime, if you are interested in having a studio with us, you can apply here. We want to get a really diverse studio offer going, so if you are working creatively with new technologies, or ancient crafts, all are welcome. We are particularly interested to hear from people with Keighley Postcodes, from working class and poor backgrounds. This could be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for!

Are you enjoying this year’s Drawing Box Project? It’s the last two weeks and we would LOVE to see how you are getting on.

We have been sharing lots of your brilliant drawings and photos online, but we can never have too many! You can share pages from your sketch books and fold out sheets, or tell us about the objects you have chosen. Let us know what you’ve enjoyed, what would have made it even better, and what you would like us to do next year. Your feedback is very important to us, thank you.

You can share your images on the Keighley Creative Instagram and Facebook pages, remembering to use our hashtags: #kcdrawingboxproject and #yourhouseisamuseum, or you can email images or comments to Naseem directly at Naseem@keighleycreative.org.

Remember 2019 and the first Keighley Arts and Film Festival?  We have not been able to go live this year with fantastic performances, so we have devised special events to take place online. Keighley Arts and Film Festival will be accessed via Facebook and Youtube.  The online Festival has been named ‘Intimate’ for this 2020 year and will come directly from the sofa’s of our performers to yours.

We have lined up for you exciting events including fresh new talent from Keighley.

Briefly this includes Rose Wheeler and Bryan Diggle performing favourite songs. Some of you will know Rose from the popular Keighley duo Felka, Rose with her beautiful voice and theatrical skills will create something spectacular for Keighley residents. Brian accompanies her on a range of instruments. We are asking everyone to contribute to the selection process for songs on the Keighley Arts and film Festival Facebook. Look out for Rose and Bryan’s first release Friday 31st July – this will be their own rendition of Cars by Garry Numan. Watch out for the extraordinary video!  Further releases of remakes of some classic songs will follow as August progresses. 

Follow us on Facebook to find out more: Keighley Arts and Film Festival

Our favourite story teller Sue Dyde will present Murky Tales of Keighley, skillfully creating a web of intrigue with her quirky tales. This will be experienced as a podcast online. Murky Tales will be released towards the end of September.

Nabila Ahmed, multilingual poet will be delivering as a podcast, a series of beautiful poems covering themes such as love, injustice and isolation. A tonic for our times Nabieela’s poems sing out with personal experience and warmth. During August, She will read a selection of her poetry in 3 languages, Urdu, Bahari and English. Nabeela will be holding an online tea party and poetry reading for all to take part in on Friday 28th August. This will be online and will be widely publicised. At the tea party we will be hearing a little of her poetry and talking to Nabeela about her career in spoken word with a question and answer session. You can hear more from Nabeela and the team behind this years festival on Asian Fever Radio in August. 

During October the RATMA Film Festival will take place and we will be making announcements nearer the time about that.  We are looking forward to seeing what Films Marcus and Gareth have found around the world for us to see. Have a look on the RATMA festival web site for details of how to enter your films into the competition. 

https://www.ratmafilmfestival.com/