UK's first collaboratively curated arts festival?

In the Works Festival feels like it might be something genuinely unusual in the UK cultural landscape: a multi-arts festival not led by a single organisation, but collaboratively curated by a network of cultural partners across an entire town.

Emerging directly out of the relationships and shared ambition built through We Are Ipswich, the festival brings together organisations with very different audiences, scales and artforms to collectively champion bold new work, contemporary performance, live art, music, film, conversation and creative experimentation.

We Are Ipswich is a growing cross-sector cultural partnership for the town, bringing together arts organisations, festivals, heritage partners, education providers, local authorities, community organisations and businesses to think collectively about the role culture can play in Ipswich’s future. Originally formed between Ipswich’s National Portfolio Organisations, it has evolved into a much broader civic and cultural network focused on collaboration, cultural leadership and long-term place-making. I currently chair the partnership, which has become an important space for organisations to share ideas, build trust and develop ambitious projects together.

At a time when the arts sector is often pushed toward competition, duplication and protecting individual organisational identity, In the Works has grown from a different instinct altogether: collaboration. A belief that culture in Ipswich becomes stronger, more ambitious and more visible when organisations work together rather than alongside one another.

The festival has been shaped by partners including New Wolsey Theatre, Eastern Angles, SPILL Festival, Suffolk Community Libraries, Brighten The Corners and King Street Cinema — each bringing their own artistic voice, audiences and networks into a shared programme. The result is something that feels greater than a traditional festival model: audiences moving across venues, artforms and communities, discovering work they may never otherwise have encountered.

Importantly, the festival has also come out of a very practical need: how do we collectively grow audiences for contemporary work in Ipswich?

Across the country, theatres and arts organisations are still navigating the aftershocks of the pandemic. Audiences have understandably gravitated toward familiar, popular and recognisable titles — work that feels safe, celebratory or known. Whilst that has played an important role in rebuilding confidence and attendance, it has also created real challenges for the ecology of contemporary and risk-taking work.

What In the Works recognises is that audiences for new work do not grow overnight and they do not grow in isolation. They are built collectively, through consistency, invitation, visibility and shared advocacy across a place. By joining forces, organisations can help audiences feel more confident in taking creative risks themselves — whether that’s seeing live art for the first time, attending a new writing performance, engaging with political theatre, or walking into a venue they’ve never visited before.

Over the weeks of the festival, we’ve certainly experienced an appetite and a need for the new. Audiences have embraced challenging, joyful, political, queer, funny and form-breaking work with real enthusiasm. There’s been a palpable sense that people are hungry not just for entertainment, but for discovery, conversation and experiences that feel alive and of the moment.

The festival isn’t simply about presenting finished work either. It’s about creating space for experimentation, conversation and artist development. Alongside performances and events there has been support for artists developing new ideas, conversations around funding and creative practice, and opportunities for local audiences to engage with contemporary work that often struggles to find a sustainable platform outside major cities.

In the Works also points toward something bigger about the future of cultural place-making. It demonstrates what can happen when organisations trust one another enough to share platforms, audiences and ambition. It’s a practical example of the kind of civic cultural ecology that We Are Ipswich has been working to build: one rooted in generosity, shared ownership and a belief that culture can help shape the identity, confidence and creative future of a town.

Whether it is the UK’s first collaboratively curated arts festival is hard to definitively claim — but it certainly feels rare. And perhaps more importantly, it feels necessary.