There is a growing demand for our town centres to offer more than just shopping. Our town centres need multi-use spaces that attract visitors for more than one reason.

Dewsbury's creative town approach will encourage creativity to thrive throughout and create a place where everyone can have opportunities to create and experience art in all of its forms: music, dance, sculpture or any other creative activity. We want to stimulate creativity amongst our residents and open more doors to creative opportunities.

The story so far

We are working with communities and organisations to create more opportunities for creatives to come together and work professionally or informally, sharing their projects and ideas with local people.

The Dewsbury Creative Town Arts Programme is part of our Blueprint plans to revitalise the town centre. There have already been some fantastic projects.

What's next?

As part of the Town Deal, we are exploring the development of a Creative Hub in Dewsbury town centre.

The new art installation to the Dewsbury underpass created by Saba Rifat title 'Tessella', is due to be installed by the end of October 2022.

We are always working with new artists and new organisations, but we know that creativity does not stop at the purely artistic and cultural professionals, it also reaches into many others such as technology and engineering.

We aim to help form connections, alliances and partnerships to support change that sticks. Collaborating with a wide range of people always generates the newest, freshest ideas.

We are also continuing our work to encourage creative activity by commissioning our own creative events and supporting community initiatives.

The Vacant Unit Project (VU Project) is a scheme that allows the use of vacant buildings or spaces for creative or cultural activities, groups and events, whilst long-term plans are finalised.

These spaces can be available for as little as a few weeks or as long as several years, depending on where the space is and who owns it.