An ambitious new creative health programme is unfolding in Herefordshire.
Led by Herefordshire Cultural Partnership and delivered in collaboration with Meadow Arts, Rural Media, and Leominster Cultural Consortium, Our Place will empower communities through art, creativity and culture in Leominster, South Wye (Hereford City) and the Golden Valley.
A Place Partnership Programme
Our Place will deliver transformative, place-based cultural programming that improves lives. The programme will make a lasting impact on the cultural landscape of Herefordshire, enhancing health, well-being, and community spirit through the arts.
By the end of the three-year programme, we expect to have:
- Fostered pride in place across all three locations.
- Used arts & culture to address health and social inequality, particularly impacting children, young people and elders in all three locations.
- Trialled new approaches that draw on cross-sector innovation, particularly linking arts, health, and wellbeing with social prescribing networks and the Local Authority Talk Community network countywide.
- Delivered new skills, training, and volunteering opportunities for communities and facilitators, enhancing social mobility.
- Developed sustainable co-creation models for arts provision in Herefordshire.
- Created an exemplary project of creative programming, analysis, and consultation that can be disseminated and employed by rural communities across the UK.
Our Place is supported by public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England and match funding from Herefordshire Council under the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and public health funding.
Our Place Leominster
Leominster Cultural Consortium is a network of arts and cultural organisations and businesses committed to celebrating the artistic skill and cultural life of Leominster. Leominster Roars will co-produce extraordinary art and celebrate creativity in Leominster with our community.
Our Place Golden Valley
Meadow Arts will focus on the unique geographical location of the Golden Valley in rural southwest Herefordshire. Using contemporary visual arts they aim to connect with the communities that live there, reflecting upon and responding to their relationship to where they live.
Our Place South Wye
Rural Media will collaborate with residents and groups in South Wye to explore how creative habits and creative production can sustainably support communities to deeply connect with their place, and how access to cultural activity can improve lives and respond to specific issues.
Our Place Receives Place Partnership Funding from Arts Council England
In the summer of 2024, Herefordshire Cultural Partnership was awarded £596,000 through Arts Council England’s Place Partnership Programme, funded by the National Lottery.
This funding is being used to establish “Our Place”, an initiative to enhance opportunities and improve residents' quality of life by creating a new model for creative and cultural engagement with the arts in one of the UK's most rural counties.
Our Place has also received £86,400 in funding from Herefordshire Council under the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and £15,000 from public health funding.
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Header Image: Jubilee celebrations in Leominster, including a lion puppet and members of the Broseley Beats Samba Band. Photo credit: Richard Shakespeare.