Claire Tymon is one of our latest cohort of AHRC Creative Communities programme Community Innovation Practitioners (CIPs). Based at the University of Huddersfield, she is leading on the delivery of a new co-created cultural strategy for Kirklees. The strategy has three main themes: promoting creative health, inclusivity in heritage and enhancing lifelong learning on the high street.
Claire’s work will align place-based co-creation with wider devolution strategy in West Yorkshire Combined Authority and develop a proof of concept for sustainable cultural development in devolved areas across the UK.
The Creative Communities team visited Claire and her wider team, including her academic supervisor Professor Rowan Bailey, to see the research locations and meet key stakeholders and cultural partners involved in the co-design and co-creation of the cultural strategy.
First stop was Hoot, where the focus was on creative health. Established 20 years ago, Hoot is a creative arts, Arts Council national portfolio organisation based in Bates Mill, delivering a diverse range of creative activities that support mental health and emotional wellbeing.
Next was The Piazza, a near-empty town centre shopping complex that, in the wake of departing retail businesses, has been transformed into artistic ‘meanwhile’ spaces: pop-up workshop hubs known as the ‘Creative Piazza.’ The empty shops have been transformed into colourful spaces that support lifelong learning on the high street in Huddersfield.
The Creative Piazza is currently home to West Yorkshire Print Workshop, founded 40 years ago, and Thread Republic, a CIC that promotes textile re-use and craft skills development. As a central hub for makers and crafters across the town, recycling preloved clothes and donated fabric remnants, Thread Republic saves a staggering 4.5kg per day from going to landfill. Next door in the shopping precinct was MakerWorld and The Children’s Art School (located in the old ‘Toyland’ shop space), which has in its basement an indoor skateboard ramp for the town’s young people.
The Creative Piazza is on the site of what will be the new Cultural Heart of Huddersfield, that will connect the museum with the newly refurbished museum and gallery with cultural venues, public square and a former Victorian market that will become a food hall.
The locus of Huddersfield’s long-standing cultural network is Culture Collective, a body that bridges the gap between cultural organisations, the local authority and other key policy makers, funders and governing bodies to build collaboration around sector specific and place-based priorities. The Collective is chaired by Chloe Whitehead, who is also Director of Proper Job Theatre, an independent theatre company in Huddersfield specialising in story making and social change, who profiled their distinctive workshop and rehearsal spaces.
A final stop to meet council leaders in the public library enabled a discussion on plans for inclusive heritage and embedding culture alongside tourism. It also provided space to discuss the opportunities afforded by the CIP Award for embedding public voice in the co design of the cultural strategy, as well as the challenges of delivering a cultural strategy that includes 23 council wards across urban and rural communities.
Our investment in the ecosystem of Huddersfield and Kirklees is timely. 2025-26 is a moment when arts and cultural organisations that are aligned with cultural democracy, wellbeing and inclusion can imprint their values into the newly emerging cultural strategy and the new beating Cultural Heart at the locus of both Huddersfield town and the wider Kirklees region. Powered by the policy and potential of devolution, Claire’s work has the potential to become a model for how to deliver place-based innovation in cultural strategy.
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