Art lovers flock to opening

Dewsbury Arts Group celebrated the official opening of its refurbished Artspace last weekend with two days of tours, exhibitions, performances and demonstrations.

Chairman David Wood MBE said: “You never know with an event like this exactly what’s going to happen but we had 130 people on Saturday and 126 on Sunday. It was buzzing all the time over the weekend.”

The event was the first chance for the community to tour the group’s Peel Street building since its £160,000 refurbishment.

The Artspace is now home to a theatre, studio space, rehearsal rooms and recording studio.

Mr Wood said: “We’ve had people in there before for the theatre but they’ve never had the opportunity to see the whole building from the costume department at the top down to the workshop. The comments were all very favourable.”

The celebrations coincided with the HOST event, which opens artists’ studios to the public.

Mr Wood said: “We had 10 artists working in the building and another five sharing their work. People were pleased to watch them working and ask questions about what they were doing. It was very good.”

The facility was officially opened by the Mayor of Kirklees, Coun Eric Firth, on Saturday morning.

He said: “It was a delight to wander around and watch the artists working in lots of different ways.

“They’ve got every facility in there but the best thing was how proud they are of it and the town.”