WOVEN in Kirklees announces funding for community textile projects in 2025

This support will enable the festival to launch three ACE-funded local hub community projects in partnership with Chestnut Centre in Deighton, Birkby and Fartown Library and Ravensthorpe Community Centre.

These collaborations, supported by mental health and wellbeing charity Support 2 Recovery (S2R) and Kirklees Libraries, aim to empower communities to develop their own WOVEN festival experiences and generate ideas that reflect unique cultural identities and aspirations.

“We are delighted to support WOVEN 2025 through our National Lottery Project Grants investment,” said Dan Jarvis, Senior Relationship Manager at Arts Council England, “This grassroots festival will create opportunities for Kirklees’ communities to co-produce and create their own mini-festival, celebrating the region’s rich textiles heritage.”

“This funding success will enable WOVEN to provide more artistic and creative opportunities throughout our towns and villages,” said Councillor Carole Pattison, Leader of Kirklees Council and Cabinet Member for Culture.

The theme for WOVEN 2025 is "Connecting Culture," reflecting the festival's role in bringing communities together through the universal language of textiles. During the festival, various free and ticketed events will celebrate textiles all across Kirklees, with exhibitions showcasing local and international textile art as well as workshops teaching traditional and innovative textile techniques, talks and tours exploring the region’s textile heritage and future and community projects connecting diverse cultural backgrounds through textiles.

Micro-grants and crowdfunding opportunities

In addition to the local hub projects, WOVEN is partnering with Kirklees Council and Spacehive to offer a number of micro-grants for community textile projects and events who raise funding through the civic crowdfunding platform Growing Great Places. These projects could be anything from workshops, exhibitions and talks to tours or yarn bombs. The project can start before June but the final outcome must be during the period of WOVEN 2025 in June.

If you would like to join an online session to find out more about running projects to take part in WOVEN 2025, you can sign up to join a WOVEN-specific session on 11th or 12th February here: Tuesday 11th February at 10.30am & Wednesday 12th February at 6pm.

“We are delighted to be able to use the Growing Great Places platform to offer funds to communities across Kirklees,” says WOVEN curator, Natalie Walton, “The platform is a great way to get support from both the WOVEN and Active Citizens & Places Team about crowdfunding and your project.”

She adds, “Every time we develop the WOVEN festival in Kirklees, at least one third of the events and activities are developed by our communities and this year we want to support more local projects through micro grants. These small pots will support those starting out to bring an artist in to run a session, buy materials to develop their yarn bomb, pay for a speaker to give a talk or travel costs for a group to attend an event.”

Participating events should take place between Sunday 1 and Monday 30 June 2025 and proposals should be submitted by Sunday 2 March via the Spacehive portal.

To apply for funding please visit www.spacehive.com/profile/kirkleescouncil

For more information on WOVEN 2025 and to submit event proposals, visit https://woveninkirklees.co.uk.

About WOVEN

WOVEN is a biennial festival that began in 2019, with the next event running from 1 to 30 June 2025.

WOVEN is initiated by Kirklees Council but is owned by everyone, including community groups, textile businesses, cultural and educational organisations, artists and heritage sites across the district.

WOVEN’s theme focuses on generations of innovators, connecting West Yorkshire’s Kirklees’ strong heritage with today’s innovative developments in industry, university research, a strong arts and crafts scene and the creative expression of the district’s rich and diverse communities.

Though the big festival event takes place in June every other year, there are also long-term projects and smaller events happening in between.

Sign up to our mailing list to be kept up to date on events and ways to get involved.

Facebook page |Instagram @WovenInKirklees |Twitter @WovenInKirklees

About Growing Great Places

Growing Great Places is a crowdfunding programme run in partnership between Kirklees Council and crowdfunding platform Spacehive. We want everyone to be able to take part in making the places where they live, work and play better. Our towns, villages and communities are the strength of Kirklees. Local people have asked us to do more to recognise this. So we’re celebrating our places by encouraging more great ideas.

Through crowdfunding, groups can bring the community together around their project, attracting funding from local people, businesses and the council.

The council's Growing Great Places fund can support crowdfunding campaigns run by organisations with pledges of up to £5,000, up to 50% of the campaign target. Individuals and non-constituted community groups can apply for up to a £2,500 pledge to support their campaign.

www.spacehive.com/movement/growinggreatplaces

About Arts Council England

Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. We have set out our strategic vision in Let’s Create that by 2030 we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish and where everyone of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences. We invest public money from Government and The National Lottery to help support the sector and to deliver this vision.

https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/