Westgate Heritage Action Zone 1&2
Thanks to funding from Historic England, we were commissioned by Wakefield Council in September 2020 to deliver the first cultural engagement project as part of the wider Heritage Action Zone Project in Wakefield Westgate. As part of this project, we designed and disseminated memory capture postcards, digital engagement and delivered reminiscence and silk painting workshops at the Arthouse in Wakefield. As a further UK lockdown was enforced, Tony Wade designed and delivered remote silk painting workshops with participants across the District, hand delivering special kits and providing remote tutorials to allow people to engage with the project.
This work and the memories gathered have become part of an online exhibition and web resource, for people to find out about the living history of one of the main routes through Wakefield City Centre. You can also explore more of the heritage on Westgate in our Look Up Westgate Project
You can view the digital exhibition here or use the QR code above to send us your memories of Wakefield Westgate.
Alongside the community engagement project, we were commissioned to deliver a cultural consultation programme to inform a future programme of arts and culture in the area. We consulted a wide range of business owners, cultural organisations, workers, visitors, artists and residents in the Westgate area, using paper based methods alongside telephone interviews, digital social media engagement and email to gauge as wide ranging ideas as possible. In all, around 1,500 people engaged with the consultation and their feedback and ideas were then worked up into a larger bid to Historic England, by the Cultural Consortium and Wakefield Council. We are pleased that this bid was successful and we are currently working up a test project as part of the wider cultural programme which will take place in the Westgate Area until 2023