Walkers prepare to Light up the Night in the event organised by Keighley Town Council and Keighley Creative. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
This was the aim of a recent community walk organised by Keighley Town Council and Keighley Creative. The walk was organised as a part of Keighley Walking Festival and the theme was “Light Up The Night”.
The walk welcomed anyone who would like to come along and together we walked 2 miles round town.
Walkers prepare to Light up the Night in the event organised by Keighley Town Council and Keighley Creative. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
The walk followed a craft workshop the previous Sunday where attendees were invited to make their own light-up flower torch using recycled materials.
Some of the illuminated flower torches made by participants in the Light Up The Night workshop.
The walk welcomed people from all ages and backgrounds to join the campaign and help make Keighley’s streets feel safer.
Walkers prepare to Light up the Night in the event organised by Keighley Town Council and Keighley Creative. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
Thank you to Louise Soothill from Keighley Town Council for leading the walk and to all those who came along.
And thank you to Bob Smith Photography for the photographs.
Keighley Creative Maker Fayre and Open Studios event. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
On Saturday 17th August 2024, our studio artists were thrilled to welcome more people than ever before to their open studio event.
Nearly 100 people came to visit, had a tour, met the artists and viewed their huge range of artwork and creativity.
Sean Jukes aka Rambling Art (R)Jane Fielder (L)Naseem Darbey (L)Bill Parker (R)Visitors enjoying exploring the studios
The artists that hosted included Jane Fielder, Dripsy, Naseem Darbey, Jonathan Britten, Martin Cosgrove, Sean Jukes aka Rambling Art, Bill Parker and Leonie Briggs.
The first floor studios were opened up to the public whilst a makers fair went out downstairs. Local creatives had stalls selling their handmade products and visitors enjoyed browsing and shopping.
Black Craft by CKDripsyCharles HumphreysMiss Hue DesignsHoping SewOakfield CraftsAnna Gouws ArtworkKat Rose Illustration
Goods on sale included jewellery, paintings, quilts, prints, homewares and gifts. Stallholders included Black Craft by CK, Charles Humphreys, Miss Hue Designs, Oakfield Crafts, Anna Gouws Artwork, Dripsy, Kat Rose Illustration and Hoping Sew.
Due to the success of the previous events another one has already been booked in for Saturday 30th November 2024. The event will again include artists opening up their studios as well as a makers fair, perfectly timed for Christmas shopping.
To apply for a stall at the next one, please follow the link below:
Pippa Vellacott, four, shows off the wind chime she made at the creative nature event at Cliffe Castle organised by Keighley Creative Photo: Bob Smith Photography
On Saturday 17th August 2024, 100s of Keighley people came along to Cliffe Castle park and joined in some fun, creative sessions run by Keighley Creative that focused on learning about the environment.
Families who attended were given the opportunity to join in with all sorts of activities and everyone was welcomed to get stuck in, no matter what their age or ability.
Approximately 350 visitors took part in various activities using and celebrating nature including making journals, sharing stories, making wind chimes, taking a story stick for a walk and adding their self-made pom-poms to the “Blanket Bog Blanket”.
Some of the comments from families that attended included:
“My kids really, really loved it all. It was so nice to see so many people getting involved.”
“Pom-pom making is so satisfying and calming.”
“I made a journal and I’m going to record in here every day of the summer holidays.”
“Making wind chimes was a very therapeutic activity.”
The creative nature event at Cliffe Castle organised by Keighley Creative Photo: Bob Smith Photography
Local artist, educator and project lead, Naseem Darbey, was thrilled that the event was such a success and said:
“It was a family celebration enjoyed by all and we got so much positive feedback evidencing how much the workshops were loved. People left with their nature gift bags stuffed full of all their own fabulous handmade goods including journals, wind chimes, pom-poms and recipes, and even stories to share. Cliffe Castle park was buzzing and it was fab to see so many smiles.”
The Pledges to the Landscape event was a celebration of a ongoing project run by the charity alongside Yorkshire Peat Partnership (YPP), and funded by West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s Community Climate Grants. Local school children from Year 5 at Eastwood, Victoria, Riddlesden St. Mary’s, Worth Valley, Holycroft and Merlin Top primaries were involved as classes were given their own “micro-peatbogs” to look after and then took part in interactive art workshops in the classroom.
The aim of the Pledges to the Landscape project and the event was not only to get creative but to help educate participants about the environment around them and particularly the importance of Yorkshire’s peat bogs, their plants and wildlife.
Lucy Lee from Yorkshire Peat Partnership with the “Blanket Bog Blanket”. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
Spokesperson from YPP, Lucy Lee, said: “Our unique landscapes, peatlands and their plants are truly beautiful but they are also critical to the preservation of our natural environment. It’s important that we all learn about how important bogs are so we are keen to get children involved from as young an age as possible.”
The workshops have been designed and delivered by Naseem, who visited the schools and helped children study their own classroom “micro-bog”. She encouraged pupils to be inspired by the plants that were growing in the bog and to study them using hand-lenses and identification cards. They then used their senses to observe and their drawing skills to record what they had discovered.
Naseem said: “The children that have been involved in the classroom project learnt about the importance of the plants and landscapes around them and how their preservation is essential. We looked at the past, present and future of these environments to help the children understand how they work and they documented the peatbogs using drawing materials. They tried different drawing techniques which helped the children really engage with the bog and they created some beautiful art in the process.”
Showing off the Worth Valley Primary School bog at the creative nature event at Cliffe Castle are, from left, Naseem Darbey, Victoria Townson and Lucy Lee. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
As Naseem continued: “The sessions provided by YPP and I were designed to engage the children by having fun, being creative and sometimes getting messy! This hands-on approach really helped the children understand their local environment and has hopefully inspired the next generation to contribute to the conservation of our peatlands.”
The project has been funded by Bradford Council, the Mayor of West Yorkshire and West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s Community Climate Grants.
Newly appointed Creative Director, Paula Clark finished by saying: “As a newcomer to Keighley Creative I am so excited by the energy and enthusiasm of the people of Keighley to get involved in this creative and collaborative community project. It’s also fantastic to see the commitment of the talented Keighley Creative team and Yorkshire Peat Partnership to make meaningful projects like this happen. I’m looking forward to everything that is to come next!”
For more information on your local peatlands, please contact Yorkshire Peat Partnership. For more information on arts and crafts workshop offerings from Keighley Creative and Naseem Darbey, please email admin@keighleycreative.org
Paula Clark, who has been appointed creative director of Keighley Creative. Photo: Bob Smith Photography
Art charity Keighley Creative has appointed a woman with more than 25 years’ experience working with communities throughout the North to lead its creative team.
Paula Clark said she is very excited to step into the post of creative director at a crucial time for the expanding organisation.
She will lead the team in ensuring delivery of existing projects and new ventures as the charity looks forward to a move into its new home in the former Sunwin House on Hanover Street. Keighley Creative currently runs weekly Arts for Brain Health sessions; the Drawing Box Project; hosts studios for artists, along with their pop-up shops and Makers’ Fairs at its present base in the former Argos building on Cooke Lane.
The charity is also collaborating with Yorkshire Peat Partnership in the Bog in a Drawing Box project, culminating in a family creative-nature day on 10 August in Cliffe Castle Park and is hosting a series of watercolour painting workshops with artist Linda Hollingshead. It also holds regular artist get-togethers. Keighley Towns Fund board recently commissioned the organisation to consult with communities on the town’s long-term plan.
Paula, who was born in north Wales but who has been based in York since she was 10, was impressed with Keighley when she first visited the town. She said: “I’m really new to Keighley but I’ve already picked up that it feels a really vibrant place.
“I have been given such a warm welcome; people are really friendly. It feels like a town that, despite challenges, is still living and breathing. There’s so much there to celebrate and build on.”
The new creative director said social cohesion is an important part of building communities. “People have been really struggling. Covid 19 and the cost of living crisis have had a huge impact on people socially and financially. I’m from a disadvantaged background, and know first-hand how accessing creativity can improve wellbeing, mental health, reduce social isolation and bring joy. So, to me it’s important to be working on people’s doorstep and making sure everyone is getting access to these kinds of provisions and cultural experiences that can bring people together, help us to heal and look forward to a better future.
“We know the power that arts and creativity have to bind us together and it can be a game-changer, especially for young people and people who face barriers to accessing opportunities. It’s only by listening to and working together with our community, that we can learn more about how people are already engaging with culture, what they would really like to see more of and challenge the perception that arts and culture is only for those that can afford it.
“At Keighley Creative we want to include everyone and make sure the people of Keighley know that their ideas and opinions are valued and cared about.
“I’m very excited to be joining Keighley Creative at what feels like an exciting moment in time for the organisation and I’m really looking forward to working with the incredibly talented team here to create vision for the next 12 months that is all about celebrating Keighley and its residents, everything it’s already got going on, but also all of the new possibilities that will come with the redevelopment of Keighley Creative’s former home, Sunwin House, that will hopefully put Keighley on the map as a cultural hub and bring new people into town”
Paula worked at York Theatre Royal in various roles, including outreach director, for 10 years. She was head of programme for Creative Scene in Dewsbury, an Arts Council-Creative People and Places organisation; set up her own female-led community-interest company Bolshee and has extensive experience working with young people and communities in socially engaged practice.
Paula’s appointment follows that of former Keighley Creative trustee Riaz Meer as executive director, funded by and seconded from the Kala Sangam charity. The Bradford-based organisation also funded Lauren Kelly’s post of arts and heritage officer with Keighley Creative. Cat Murray continues in her post as event manager, with Naseem Darbey creative lead. Naseem has been running the Bog in a Drawing Box and the Pledges to the Landscape project with schoolchildren. Two new artists have recently been added to the team of studio holders and there will be an open studios event during the Makers’ Fair on 17 August, when the public can view the work of the Keighley Creative studio holders.
Recently one of our Arts for Brain Health groups took a field trip!
10 people from the Monday Creative group visited Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford with facilitators, Ailsa Lewer and Carine Brosse. The Monday group welcomes participants who are affected by dementia and their carers.
We hired a minibus from Keighley Community Transport to take the group there and picked participants up along the way.
The group spent over an hour in the main gallery where people had an opportunity to look around and then we sat round two paintings. We talked about the paintings, discussing the artists and what people thought about the paintings. We also talked about the connections between the subject matter of the two paintings as both are about textile making – the Lowry showing a smoky. industrial landscape of textile mills in Manchester compared to the peaceful, domestic scene in “The Arab Weaver”.
Studying a Lowry
Studying The Arab Weaver
Many thanks to staff at Cartwright Hall from Bradford Museums who made the visit possible – helping us with access to the disabled entrance, providing chairs and making refreshments.
We look forward to further visits to Bradford Museums.
If you are any to find out more about our Arts for Brain Health project and the Monday Creatuve group, please visit our website.
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
Calling all Keighley Makers!!! Apply for a stall at our upcoming event.
We are now taking applications for local creatives who would like a stall at our upcoming Summer Maker Fayre and Open Studios on Saturday 17th August 2024.
We would like applications from makers based in and around Keighley who would like to sell their creations at our upcoming event. Be it jewellery, ceramics, paintings, gifts, woodwork or something else, please get in touch.
Deadline for applications is Friday 26th July 2024.
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
This weekend a big community event was held on Church Green in Keighley.
The Eid on the Green event featured a host of activities including an arts and crafts stall hosted by our fab team as well as soft archery, rodeo football and face painting.
There were also stalls by Keighley Lions and Pawperfection Rehoming and housing association, Incommunities, ran a competition for the best henna designs.
An amazing performance was put on by local musicians and dancers Punjabi Roots and Cecil Green Arts held a circus workshop and show.
Thank you to Keighley Town Council for organising and hosting the event which took place on the Church Green car park on Saturday 22nd June 2024.
For information on Keighley Creative hosting an arts and craft workshop at your next event, please email admin@keighleycreative.org
