About

Brighouse Arts Festival is organised by the local not-for-profit charity Arts for Brighouse. We employ the arts to advance the education, promote public appreciation, and engage with communities, for the people of Brighouse and the borough of Calderdale, West Yorkshire.

Brighouse Arts Festival 2018 will enable arts to be a vital role in enabling Brighouse to become a culturally active place to live and visit. This year’s theme is ‘Reaching Out’ – as we will use the arts as a catalyst for social cohesion and to bring people together and build strong relationships in and across communities. Our high quality and unique arts festival has run for six years and has been organised by our charity volunteers for the past two years.

It has been highly successful with our 2017 festival seeing 3,500 audience members and 132,000 online engagements. We programmed 149 artists and the festival was organised by 40 volunteers. Most importantly, we engaged 420 people in free participatory activities, had 459 young people attend the festival, had 867 people attend workshops and talks, with 75% of our audience over the age of 60.

We will champion methods of reaching out and increase accessibility to the arts, for example introducing sign interpreters at specific spoken word events to ensure that we engage community members and reaching those who may find barriers to engaging in activities.

We are looking for new volunteer roles in the design, development, and delivery of the project. Research states that community activities, cultural events, and volunteering initiatives are a vital issue in Brighouse and “have the potential to transform and improve local lives and there is a need for more cultural amenities in Calderdale and promoting engagement with them” (Community Foundation for Calderdale, Vital Signs Report).

Our Team

Brighouse Arts Festival is completely volunteer led and our events are organised by a committed team of volunteers.