In 2026, Junction Arts celebrates fifty years of placemaking through grassroots community arts. Founded in 1976, in a place undergoing a transformational shift from a mining community into the post-industrial era, Junction Arts’ evolving creative programme illustrates the opportunities and potential of art in communities undergoing economic, social, demographic and political change. Freelance creative practitioner Kathryn Welch, tells us more about the Junction Arts story and what has been learnt through 50 years of creative placemaking.

Junction Arts was founded in the District of Bolsover, in rural North East Derbyshire, by local people who had “a bit of an idea, to bring some sort of animation to a little town in the throes of change” (Junction Arts Annual Report, 2000-01). Over Junction Arts’ half-century of experience, it has occupied a space of constant flexibility, responding to the social and economic landscape in which it is rooted, and simultaneously working to actively create the space for imagining the future. It’s a place where change is noticed, considered and explored, and done so collectively.

Inspired by the Centre for Cultural Value’s Culture and Placemaking research digest, we want to share more about Junction Arts’ journey in the creative placemaking space. Through sharing our experiences, we aim to address some of the gaps in placemaking research identified in that digest, focusing on the experience of creative placemaking in a predominantly rural area, and from the perspectives of communities facing the multiple challenges of poverty, health inequalities and under-investment.

Responding to economic change and barriers to participation

Creative placemaking in post-industrial communities is deeply entwined with their histories of economic change and social (dis)connection. 1993 saw the closure of Bolsover and Shirebrook collieries, with other local industries, notably in chemical processing and textile manufacture, soon following suit. With them went the network of social clubs, pubs and miners’ welfares that formed the backbone of community togetherness and mutual aid. By 2001, the Census was reporting that Shirebrook, and nearby parts of Chesterfield and North East Derbyshire “display a range of social and economic problems, including high unemployment, poor health, low educational attainment and various forms of deprivation”.

The early 1990s saw Junction Arts throw itself headlong into responding to these economic shifts, asserting confidently in their 1992-93 Annual Report that “in the face of economic decline in our area, it has become increasingly evident that creative activity is of vital importance to people’s lives”. Conscious of the new skills that would be required for the changing economy, Junction Arts positioned creativity as key to “an education system obsessed with literacy and numeracy”, and creative opportunity as crucial to quality of life (Junction Arts annual report, 1997-98). They agreed to focus on a new strand of work specifically tailored to the needs of young people, developing a new “local people, local skills” programme to create work in schools and a lifelong learning programme with specific social, environmental, and educational outcomes.

Junction Arts’ success in enabling people to embrace new opportunities is built, in part, on their work recognising and addressing the barriers potential participants face. Some of these barriers are deeply practical: bus routes, the financial costs of attendance and event timing are all carefully considered. Other barriers are social and emotional. For example, some participants need access to quiet spaces away from the hustle and bustle of a busy session, while for others, the act of sharing food has proved effective in both meeting the immediate needs of those who arrive hungry, while also creating opportunities to get to know one-another.

Taking care to address barriers and enable participation has proven impactful. Young people joining Junction Arts’ creative groups report feeling more confident to try other activities, such as drama clubs, art classes and sports activities. Moreover, confidence spills over into other areas of life. They have been more interested in college and exploring post-school options, and demonstrated a greater awareness of their mental health, proving more able and willing to reach out for additional support when needed.

Building pride in place through co-creation

Alongside equipping people with the skills to navigate their changing social context, Junction Arts took seriously its founding purpose – to create ‘animation’ in and for its communities. Junction Arts positions creativity as a way to realise a vibrant, optimistic future for Bolsover. A flagship public art sculpture, Bolsover Gateway, by artist Liz Lemon, and commissioned by Junction Arts, welcomes folk to Bolsover with the slogan “the past we inherit, the future we create”.

This vision of a positive, ambitious future needed high-profile moments of togetherness, an opportunity for the people of Bolsover to see the place as somewhere that things happen, and a place with a future that could be created collaboratively. Bolsover Lantern Parade, founded in 1994 and celebrating its 32nd edition this year, offered a way to realise that vision. Created each year from scratch by hundreds of local participants supported by community artists, the lantern parade is a highlight of the town’s annual calendar, drawing in visitors from across the region, as well as creating a real sense of pride for local families, many of whom have now taken part across multiple generations. The willow and tissue-paper creations grow more elaborate each year, with the parade representing the glorious diversity of the town’s community groups, schools, passions, interests and creative inspiration. Embracing everything from Buzz Lightyear to steam trains, smoke-breathing dragons and astronauts, this is a place where all ideas are enthusiastically embraced into a noisy, joyous celebration of local creativity.

This sense of a community’s pride in their place, and sense of agency to shape it, is enabled by Junction Arts’ approach to co-producing creative activity alongside participants. This illustrates in practice the findings from the Centre’s research digest: that placemaking practices are inherently ‘collaborative in nature’, and in a grassroots context are ‘as much about social processes than tangible outputs’. For Junction Arts, this means that programmes of activity aren’t fixed in advance, but rather shaped by and with participants. Creative practitioners may introduce new ideas, artforms, practices and approaches, but participants are given every opportunity to choose which direction the activities take, adopting leadership responsibilities in sharing skills and supporting new attendees, and in making decisions about what their provision looks like. As such, no two groups or activities look the same, each growing and evolving in response to the needs and aspirations of its participants. In doing so, creative placemaking becomes led by the community, rather than something imposed upon it from the outside.

Navigating demographic change and divided communities

Whilst the end of mining in North East Derbyshire marked the end of one era, new jobs brought their own challenges and opportunities and made their own mark on the shape of this community. Most prominent amongst new local employers was Sports Direct, whose headquarters and distribution centre opened in Shirebrook in 2013. Bringing 4,000 new jobs, the new opportunities also attracted some 1,500 people relocating to Shirebrook, many of them arriving in the UK from Poland, Latvia, Romania and Bulgaria. A 2016 parliamentary report found that many of the new Sports Direct workers were offered zero-hour contracts, for low pay and in frequently exploitative conditions, presenting “a disturbing picture” of “appalling working conditions and practices”.

The arrival of new people and demographics led to a new approach to community-building and placemaking. A refresh of Junction Arts’ strategic priorities in 2001 identified community cohesion as a key focus, with projects “designed to tackle the problems we face of social inclusion, neighbourhood renewal, and cultural diversity” (Junction Arts annual report, 2000-01). For community artists, working with the diversity of stories within and between communities is nothing new. The community arts movement had grown from a desire to share the less-told stories of those excluded from dominant narratives, and from its earliest days, Junction Arts developed projects to reflect the ‘special needs’ of women (founding a vibrant women’s choir and printmaking group), disabled people and teenage parents. Today, projects similarly showcase the experiences of young LGBTQ+ people, celebrate the thriving creative groups led by the area’s diverse ethnic communities and create space for people from all kinds of backgrounds to build relationships, navigate differences and engage constructively with ideas about our past and future. In doing so, this work builds on the research digest findings that complicate binary narratives of ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ development, instead illustrating how placemaking initiatives from a range of actors have evolved alongside, in response to, and in dialogue with each other.

What stands out from Junction Arts’ experience is the importance of time and the long-term support required for building trusted relationships with changing and sometimes complicated or divided communities. Relationships develop over time, and building trust with those who might feel cautious, ignored or sceptical is a long-term, ongoing process with no shortcuts. The Junction Arts ethos is to move “at the speed of trust”; as one community artist reflects: “You can’t expect you are going to start and get massive numbers [straight away]. The work involved in getting young people even confident enough to attend the sessions is big… they need smaller steps and encouragement to engage”.

Shaping and being shaped by places

The learning from this work underlines:

• the need to address participants’ practical, emotional and social barriers in projects that respond to the full complexity of people, lives, places and communities;
• the value of co-production to allow participants to shape interventions that respond to their needs and aspirations;
• the importance of time and long-term support for building trust and allowing places, priorities and relationships to evolve.

Through these processes, matured over 50 years, you get a place and an organisation that are inherently of one another. Junction Arts would not be the same if it had begun somewhere else, but it’s also true that Bolsover would not be the place it is today without the constant presence and gentle creative provocations of Junction Arts. It may be true that the only constant is change, but the consistency, stability and longstanding experience of one of the UK’s oldest and most established community arts organisations strongly positions the District of Bolsover communities to be able to navigate change – past, present and future, together.

Kathryn Welch (she/her) is a freelance creative practitioner working at the intersection between the arts and social change. Current and recent roles include C0-Director of Culture Counts (Scotland’s advocacy network for arts, heritage and creative industry organisations), and as Programme Lead for Culture Collective (Creative Scotland’s flagship funding programme for participatory arts). Now based in Central Scotland, she grew up in Bolsover and was a participant of Junction Arts’ creative programmes throughout the 1990s. Connect with Kathryn via her website or on LinkedIn.

To support, follow, or learn more about Junction Arts, take a look at their website or connect via Facebook or Instagram.

To find out more about how the Centre for Cultural Value’s work provides insights into culture and placemaking, take a look at these resources:

Research digest: Culture and placemaking
Research digest: The role of the artist in society
Research digest: Lifelong cultural engagement
Essential Reads: The politics and possibilities of artists working with communities
Arts Professional: Culture and place: Why we need to look beyond cities

This case study from Junction Arts also reflects many of the themes now being explored in the Centre for Cultural Value’s work developing a cultural indicator suite. We’re seeking to understand and measure the cultural vitality of places in ways that recognise everyday creativity, inclusivity and the role of culture in shaping place identity and wellbeing. Learn more about this project.