On a Monday evening in early October, The Ferret, an iconic grassroots music venue, tucked away on the outskirts of Preston City Centre, was crowded with people eager to experience two back-to-back theatre performances as part of the Lancashire Fringe Festival, all under red subdued lighting.
The specially commissioned piece, He Said, She Said, was the first act of the evening by up-and-coming playwright Lydia Baines. The 30-minute play explored themes of sexual assault and rape, showing how the relationship between two friends developed and changed in the aftermath of a blurry night.
Inspired by attending performance shows in cities like Edinburgh and Manchester, writer and photographer Garry Cook, who’s organised arts events across various venues for the past decade, founded the Lancashire Fringe Festival in 2016. The fourth year of the performance festival took place in the autumn of 2024, and featured over 20 shows spanning 15 consecutive nights from 25 September to 9 October, attracting an estimated 3000 people.
A mixture of comedy, dance, spoken-word and theatre acts showcasing renowned and emerging talent was hosted across Preston venues such as The Ferret, Vinyl Tap, The Continental, Preston Central Methodist Church, Preston Bus Station, UCLan’s Media Factory and micro pubs and independent bars.
“Creatives do not have enough places and platforms to perform in the North West, in Lancashire, and particularly in Preston. I know the local actors were absolutely delighted as they rarely perform in the city where they live, because there’s a lack of opportunities, support and venues to perform in,” said Cook. Funded by Arts Council England, the main aim of the festival is to re-engage Preston audiences with arts and cultural events. Cook highlighted that it’s a long-term ‘acknowledged problem’, one of the reasons being locals are ‘out of habit’ with not having access to enough theatre spaces or arts events.
To counter this issue the festival’s shows have remained free and ticketless with an optional pay on the day donation bucket. This year’s turn out revealed a continuous improvement with Preston residents and those from nearby towns coming out in numbers to watch the performances. Cook said, “On the first night, we filled nearly 100 people in the theatre space at UCLan’s Media Factory, which was amazing.”
Playwright and actor, Lydia Baines, graduated from the Actor Training Academy at Preston College in 2024. He said She Said, is the 18-year-old’s first original piece of work that made her one of two Lancaster Playwriting Prize Winners. She wrote the play to raise awareness about sexual assault and rape particularly when the predator is someone known to the victim. Baines described the experience of having her play presented to the public for the first time at The Ferret, “On the night it was absolutely incredible watching the audience come in and knowing that they're here to see a piece that I'd written. It just made me want to write another one.
“I don't know how I would’ve been able to get my play out there without the Fringe Festival. It's really difficult trying to book venues and work it out financially. They're good at finding talented young artists and getting them into the industry.”
After learning about the new Taliban law banning women from speaking in public in Afghanistan, community facilitator and illustrator, Phoebe Foxtrot, focused her one-to-one Capacity To Hold 10 minute performances, on Saturday 28 September, to highlight the plight of women and girls around the world. Using multi-disciplinary creative practice, the artist addresses how to communicate hard-hitting issues to the wider public where there can be a disconnect. From noon to 6pm Foxtrot interacted with 116 people at Preston Bus Station, reading out her 50 written stories on courageous women, which the audience picked from a basket, and encouraged them to share proud moments and memories while creating a small clay pot together. She also sang to raise spirits in solidarity with Afghan women.
Foxtrot said, “With this project, the only rule I put into the story sharing was that people could share any story, a proud moment, but not to do with reproducing because we hold so much more than that.”
“We've had a little group of ten-year-old boys. They were being rascals, but by the end, they'd made a pot for the grandmas, and they told me stories about how brilliant their mums are. It was really special. I mean, where would they get to engage with art like this in the city? Other than just us doing a pop-up, they wouldn’t.”
The community artist was born and raised in Preston. Having completed an acting degree from UCLan in 2008, before changing careers from theatre to the arts and crafts in 2020. She now resides in Manchester having voiced the struggle to find work in Preston compared to other cities in the north west. She said, “I've lived in Preston my whole life, but I can’t seem to break through here with the work I do. The arts scene here makes me want to cry.”
“There are so many arts opportunities in Manchester, Bolton and Liverpool to work together with different communities. I suppose there’s quite a lot of NPO’s [Non-Profit Organisations] in Manchester, that has helped me work for the Royal Exchange Theatre and HOME.” Foxtrot further discussed the lack of a mid-size theatre venue that could hold more audiences .”In Preston, we need to have a producing theatre. The union agrees it’s created a big hole and is what's missing in the city. And even though the Guild Hall has re-opened, it’s not a producing theatre, it’s mainly for tribute acts.”
Besides Preston Guild Hall, Preston Playhouse, is the only performing arts theatre in the city and is situated on Market Street. Over the years it has provided local drama and dance groups opportunities to produce a variety of shows, plays and performances, but it doesn’t accommodate independent producers to use the space for shows or touring acts. This has meant audiences wanting to watch touring comedians often go to Chorley, Lancaster, Blackburn or Blackpool.
In 2014, Preston City Council, brought together a Cultural Framework Body to establish Preston as a pivotal city for all things culture in the North West with a 10 year strategy. However, in 2018, the Brewtime Collective, a network of independent creative practitioners in Preston was established out of protest over the state of arts and culture in the city. The independent sector, the council and the board scrapped the old framework and collectively created a new 12 year cultural strategy, including the voices of Preston’s creatives, artists and arts organisations. This activity will lead its direction onto the next Preston Guild in 2032 - Lancashire’s most famous event that takes place every 20 years to celebrate the city’s success.
The Preston Guild Hall, a historic entertainment venue, which closed in 2019 due to administration issues, has re-opened its foyer area to accommodate up to 500 people with Preston City Council’s six-month programme, showcasing acts, running from October 2024 to March 2025. Commenting on this, a representative for the Brewtime Collective said: “It’s pretty much all tribute acts, which is not really what the arts and cultural strategy was created for. If you're working in theatre, we all know that tribute acts are an almost guaranteed way of getting an audience. But, it's not the theatre that most creatives are interested in.”
Preston City Council's Head of Culture, Tim Joel, told Mag North Magazine that the council alone created 71 opportunities for artist engagement in 2023, with multiple artists involved. Making Preston’s culture and leisure scene appealing is one of the main goals to get people re-engaged with events.
Joel said: “Preston's on a significant precipice of change as we head into 2025 with the new Animate Leisure and Cinema Complex opening at the beginning of next year, the Harris following shortly after in spring, and then the Youth Zone opening at the end of 2025. If the Guild Lounge continues successfully with the commercial acts, which it hopefully will, then that provides opportunities in the future to present a varied range of work in a 350-seated venue.”
He also touched on Preston’s need for an arts centre, “The lack of a large-scale performance venue in the city is an issue. That’s certainly a frustration shared by part of stakeholders, artists and the council. What we've got a lack of in the city is independent organisations of scale that have got staff and premises, and are able to contribute to that commissioning picture because that's where you then start to get diversity, competition and innovation in the mix. At the moment the council's having to fill quite a large portion of that commissioning gap.”’
In May 2024, The Ferret, a 200-capacity live music bar, was saved by the Music Venue Trust’s ‘Own Our Venues’ Scheme after the landlord put the building up for sale in 2022. The future and security of the grassroots music venue was solidified for Matt Fawbert, Director and Programme Manager of the venue, to continue serving the local community when it was acquired by Music Venue Properties.
Funding for individuals and organisations…
“Trying to get funding, it's the hardest thing I've ever done. You can't do it on your own. You can't do it without help from people who've got experience and know how to do it. But even with all that, it still takes months and months to do one application without any guarantee of it being successful,” said Cook, passionate for more creative projects to emerge in Preston as he believes it can happen if artists receive guidance for funding applications.
National Portfolio Organisations, [NPOs] funded by Arts Council England, are arts organisations in local areas that put on a number of arts events, festivals and projects to develop national arts and culture ecology. Research conducted by Cook found that a town or city with several NPOs has more Developing Your Creative Practice [DYPC] applications accepted - a competitive project that funds individuals to learn a new skill or carry out research for a project and develop their career in arts. In an attempt to encourage creatives from all genres to develop and go for funding, one two one artist workshops were included in this year’s Lancashire Fringe Festival.
In Lancashire, there were 25 organisations who applied for NPO funding in 2022. Only two organisations applied from Preston, compared to eight from Lancaster, six from Blackpool, and four from Blackburn.
Following the application process, 18 organisations in Lancashire were successful. They are listed here, geographically. As seen below, some cities and towns including Lancaster and Blackburn have four NPOs whereas the area of Preston only has one, which is the temporarily closed Harris Museum, Art Gallery and Library.
Over a period of nearly four years, from December 2020 to October 2024, Preston has only had two successful DYPC applications. “There are not enough arts organisations in Preston, like there are in Lancaster, Blackpool or East Lancashire including, Burnley, Burnley, Blackburn and Accrington,” said Cook.
As well as NPOs, Arts Council England has also funded 17 long-term Creative People and Places projects in the North of England, in areas where ‘involvement in creativity and culture is significantly below the national average.’ In Lancashire these are LeftCoast in Blackpool and Super Slow Way in East Lancashire, yet there are none in Preston. These findings summarise the overlooked challenges the city faces in regards to: long-term low audience engagement, lack of assistance for creatives, poor infrastructure for the arts, and a lack of facilities including artist studio spaces, theatre spaces and art galleries. A cultural investment strategy from Preston’s business leaders in this area could help influence change.
Earlier this month Katie, an audience member amongst the Short Story Slam, which saw 12 writers compete for the best story hosted in Preston Central Methodist Church, shared her reflections: “There’s quite a lot of support for artists from the North East, but I think we need more stuff like this in the North West.”
While another said: “The stories were so creative and innovative but I didn’t like the idea that the storytelling was in a church. If Preston had more community centres that were secular, like an arts centre I’d feel more comfortable.”
Although the festival has ended, Cook is continuing to work on his project of increasing audience engagement levels in the city. This’ll involve a show taking place at The Ferret or The Continental once a month with subsidised ticket prices. To encourage locals to keep seeing shows at an affordable rate.
Image Credits: Garry Cook
