We recommend Creative Lives as a great organisation to work with if you want to understand better what creative/cultural/community assets exists within your areas of multiple deprivation and how communities are engaging/participating in creative/cultural activities.

Understanding everyday creativity and culture within communities across Calderdale

Between September 2021 - January 2022, Creative Lives conducted a research project on behalf of Calderdale Council intended to better understand the current conditions for everyday creativity and culture within communities across Calderdale. Our process identified where support can be better focused to ensure that this voluntary, community-led activity is recognised alongside the formal arts offer, in ways that enable plural forms of expression to thrive across Calderdale’s diverse communities.  

Our research was timed to coincide with the publication of Calderdale Council’s new Cultural Strategy (2022-2032) and to reflect the wider ecosystem for creative cultural activity within localities, acknowledging regional and demographic inequalities.

Bobsie Robinson, Cultural Services Manager at Calderdale Council, said:

"In Calderdale we were seeking an organisation with extensive experience/knowledge of communities and their creativity to allow us to better understand the creative/cultural activities taking place within some of our most deprived wards compared to other areas across the borough that had high engagement/participation in arts and heritage activities as we developed a new Cultural Strategy.

Creative Lives more than delivered by taking the time to understand who we were as a place and our aspirations. They met with individuals, community groups and arts/heritage practitioners. The result was the production of the report ‘Creative Citizens Calderdale’ which mapped existing assets, demographic profile, employment, skills, and education levels, along with providing an analysis/insight of current engagement/participation levels across four wards. Subsequently, ‘Creative Citizens’ is now a strategic priority in the Cultural Strategy in Calderdale. The report will be invaluable as we continue to face challenges as a local authority with forever decreasing resources to inform an inclusive growth programme and targeted interventions going forward."

Read our Creative Citizens Calderdale report below or download the report here