After a fantastic response to our CultureDale Connect Fund grants released in September, we are delighted to announce the recipient organisations and their projects. Keep an eye on our events page for any additional opportunities to get involved! For more information on each project, contact the organisational email listed.
Everybody Arts
Local artist and Everybody Arts project lead Zephie Begolo will deliver a series of workshops at St Augustine’s Centre, Halifax and YSP on the theme of ‘identity’. The participants will be encouraged to reference their cultures in creating a series of busts, exploring their journeys, stories and identities. This project will open up Calderdale's thriving ceramics community to refugees who would otherwise be unable to access it. Photographer Nic Chapman will then create a series of portraits of St Augustine's Centre members which illustrate where they most feel at home in Calderdale. Concurrently with Everybody Arts' ongoing project to provide art learning with BSL interpretation for sanctuary members and the deaf community, participants will have the opportunity to take part in a two-week artist residency in the Everybody Gallery in November, where they will display their work and experiment using our large gallery space. Following this, we will offer centre members funded ceramics studio access places in order to continue their practice with Zephie providing ongoing support and monthly tutorials to build skills and confidence. Contact Everybody Arts via their website here.
Ward(s) engaged: Park
Hebden Bridge Film Festival
Building on the success of a similar pilot programme last year, Hebden Bridge Film Festival will deliver 5 film-making workshops enabling access to technical skills, workshops on narrative development, and experience with hands-on film-making for women from marginalised backgrounds. This will provide participants with the confidence, tools, and peer support to begin their journey into an industry where women remain significantly under-represented. Their films will also work towards being showcased at the Festival itself, giving participants a platform to share their stories with a wider audience. Contact Hebden Bridge Film Festival at info@hebdenbridgefilmfestival.org.
Ward(s) engaged: Todmorden
IOU Theatre
Free monthly creative workshops will be delivered at IOU Creation Centre in partnership with Dean Clough to celebrate 50 years of IOU in Calderdale in 2026. The workshops, inspired by IOU’s archive of props, photographs, films, and installations, will draw on past productions in performance, memory, storytelling, and experimentation. Participants will explore contemporary art forms (performance, visual art, kinetic sculpture, storytelling) alongside engineering and technology, building skills, confidence, and cohesion. Crucially, the work created will form part of IOU’s living archive and be presented as part of IOU at 50, ensuring participants’ voices and stories are preserved within the organisation’s history. Contact IOU Theatre via their website here.
Ward(s) engaged: Park, Calder
Northern Rascals
Two intergenerational consultation workshops will be delivered in Calderdale as part of The Age of Unmaking, Northern Rascals' most ambitious dance-theatre project to date. These sessions will introduce new skills in movement, theatre and storytelling, giving residents the opportunity to explore Calderdale’s history and their own lived experiences. Participants from these workshops will then be recruited for a Community Focus Group aimed at connected local groups who may not normally have these opportunities, embedding Calderdale voices in a broader production that will tour nationally and internationally. Contact Northern Rascals via their website here.
Ward(s) engaged: Town, Calder, Todmorden
Spreading Our Roots
Spreading Our Roots is a follow up to the understanding and connections gained from prior project Back to Our Roots, connecting people using local markets as hubs for multicultural community cohesion, shared learning, cultural exchanges, traditional skill sharing, heritage and enterprise. Local community partners Calderdale Food Network, The Outback, Calderdale Ecological Land Trust, and Pennine Cropshare will deliver a series of workshops and events using food as a platform for bringing people together to co-create solutions by exploring cultural and social traditions. The markets at Halifax and Todmorden will be hubs for events and enterprise activities, providing inclusive, accessible spaces where people from different social groups can participate in joint endeavours that foster a sense of local pride and belonging. Contact Calderdale Food Network via email at aine.calderdalefoodnetwork@gmail.com.
Ward(s) engaged: Town, Todmorden
Music for the Many
Following on from prior CultureDale project Songs From Home, a self-organising group of young people from the Gypsy/Roma community in King Cross requested regular song, music and dance sessions to build a wider community of collaboration with local groups. This project extension will create collaborations with refugee and asylum-seeker musicians, female Morris Dancers, Rushbearing and other folk artists from across the borough, culminating in two public performances in 2026 as well as a short documentary film for the project's legacy, sharing good practice of innovative community cohesion work. Contact Music for the Many via email at music4themany@gmail.com.
Ward(s) engaged: Park
Spotlight CIO
This project in collaboration with the UK Doek Festival trailblazer will deliver a programme of cultural and sports-based activities celebrating Calderdale vibrant local history, creativity and people. Residents from diverse backgrounds and areas of higher deprivation will be engaged in free activities from sports, art, drama, music, and community food events to connect people from many different backgrounds and reduce social isolation - as well as involved the UK Doek Festival trailblazer, which showcases fashion, music and heritage from different cultures. Contact Spotlight CIO via email at spotlightcios@gmail.com.
Ward(s) engaged: Park
Annapurna Indian Dance
A whole host of shared cultural activities to bring people together from diverse backgrounds will be held by Annapurna over the coming year: a festival of light celebration event with Indian stories, dance and music, an International Women's Day event with workshops in partnership with the Birchcliffe Centre, ten workshops of Traditional Indian Dance and additional workshops with many other community partners. Keep an eye on the events page for more information when announced, or follow Annapurna Indian Dance on Facebook.
Ward(s) engaged: Park, Warley, Town, Hebden Bridge, Elland, Sowerby Bridge
Calderdale Wellbeing and Healthy Minds
Developing the concept of a Lived Experience Exhibition - first tested by the Healthy Minds Forum Group earlier this year - this partnership with Everybody Arts will be developed to engage a wider audience in participating in an exhibition aimed at using creative language to express personal experience of mental health, ill health, and disability. Artistic development sessions with one-to-one support will be available throughout the project and Everybody Arts gallery spaces will be used to exhibit the final works, alongside a broader programme of workshops and artist talks open the public. Contact Healthy Minds Calderdale via email at info@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk.
Ward(s) engaged: Town
Eve Emsley
A vibrant 12-session dance performance project bringing together creative residents of all ages across Calderdale and facilitating an intergenerational space where sanctuary seeking individuals are also supported to attend and integrate into the session. Themes of community, confidence, creative practice, and joy in movement will be explored through sessions rooted in somatic movement exploration, creative play, and collaborative working to facilitate a group performance. Additional sessions will explore folk stories and global movement expression, culminating in a final performance and documentation of creative and reflective processes through testimonials, photography, and written reflections, encouraging participants and audiences to reflect on what community means to them.
Ward(s) engaged: Park, Todmorden, Calder
Happy Valley Pride
Four new workshops in collaboration with Todmorden LGBTQIA+ collective Cal De Cabaret to develop and mentor 40 local LGBTQIA+ artists to participate in a 'work-in-progress' event showcasing the participants' work to a large audience, with up to eight of the artists able to perform in a new 45-minute showcase at Happy Valley Pride's Big Day Out 2026. This project will also feature a youth workshop providing 12 young people aged 13-17 with an opportunity to showcase their work as part of the Youth Pride Takeover at the Big Day Out. Contact Happy Valley Pride via email at info@happyvalleypride.com.
.png)
