What will success look like in 2024?
We have amplified the Piece Hall effect, making heritage, arts, music and culture our unique selling point.
Calderdale is seen as the heart of the South Pennines landscape park.
How we will get there
What Calderdale can build upon
- The Piece Hall.
- Tour De Yorkshire.
- Visitor Economy Strategy.
- Regeneration of our Towns through the Towns Fund and the Heritage regeneration project.
What we need to do more of
- Create housing and places which people want to live in and thriving creative industries and creative capital.
- Develop infrastructure to enhance whole visitor offer.
- Develop a Culture/Place Strategy.
What are our key interventions
- Culture funding in place.
- Creative, Digital and Media Hub.
- South Pennine Region Park.
- Culture and Arts Delivery Programme through business rate pool.
- Towns Funding.
- Calderdale Together Housing Investment Partnership.
Exploring our distinctiveness
What is it about Calderdale that makes us truly distinctive and how can we use that in the future?
A place of culture
Calderdale is home to one of the most unique, vibrant and inspiring cultural offers in the country. No surprise then that over the past few years, this diverse borough has not been far from the limelight.
We have been the proud host to the Tour de France and Tour de Yorkshire. Celebrated the amazing Yorkshire Festival and countless other community-driven events and festivals. This includes the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival which brings the best national and international artists and performers to the area every summer. Also, we have been the backdrop to award-winning dramas like Last Tango in Halifax and Happy Valley.
“There’s real depth to the landscape – it’s so awe-inspiring. Now I see Calderdale – Halifax, Hebden Bridge, Ripponden, Sowerby Bridge and Elland as really beautiful.”
Add to that our mix of historic and eclectic theatres, there are four in Halifax alone. Our renowned live music venues showcasing the best independent talent and hosting several BBC Radio 6 Music broadcasts. Plus our unrivalled heritage and stunning landscapes, which have inspired films like the silent screen classic Helen of Four Gates (1920) and Fanny and Elvis (1999). Also works from Ted Hughes, Simon Armitage and Peter Brook.
We celebrate our history, but we are not afraid of reinvention. The year 2017 kick-started a transformation that is putting Halifax and Calderdale on the map nationally and internationally as a cultural destination. The iconic 18th century Piece Hall reopened as a contemporary leisure, retail, cultural and heritage destination after its incredible transformation, triggering ground-breaking culture-led regeneration. This and the rest of Halifax's thriving cultural quarter including the new Central Library and Archives, Square Chapel Arts Centre's new state-of-the-art performance venue and Calderdale Industrial Museum – plus the constant reinvigoration of the cultural offer throughout Calderdale – make the years leading up to 2024 truly exciting.
Nadeem Mir QPM (Queens Police Medal) has been involved in many community events in Calderdale. He said:
“I see Calderdale's cultural offer as a great way to celebrate diversity and would like to see more events that bring people together as one whole community. Events where people truly come together, talk and break down barriers. We have beautiful buildings and facilities where this can happen; where we can share our pride as residents of Calderdale and see each other as individuals, not just members of a particular culture, background or religion.
We need to continue to build confidence and inclusivity, where we recognise and understand difference but we don't fear it. This is what creates true interaction and participation in Calderdale’s events, festivals and wider cultural offer. This is challenging, but we need to be optimistic and building inclusivity needs to start as early in life as possible. Schools are an important part of this.
Calderdale has excellent community involvement in cultural activities. In the future I’d like to see more community-led events, which bring out the many skills and talents of local people.”
Pam Warhurst, community leader, activist and environment worker who founded the voluntary gardening initiative, Incredible Edible, said:
"By 2024, Calderdale needs to be bursting at the seams with talented, creative young people. To get there, every school has to respect and support every child’s right to find a creative core. Also, to be able to express this through music, the arts and the written word.
We have an opportunity, through the success of playwrights and poets such as Sally Wainwright and Andrew McMillan, to inspire a new generation of home-grown talent to tell the story of this extraordinary place in which we live.
It's nurturing this creativity at a young age that will help us grow our cultural offer and creative sectors and make them truly distinctive. Our festivals will mark out Calderdale’s quirky, creative soul and bring more visitors to share in the fun and swell the coffers of our many independent shops."