2025: Our year in highlights
Warrington Arts Festival was out of this world!
We truly built on the success of last year’s festival which was relaunched, revived and refreshed in 2024 thanks to support from Arts Council England, Warrington BID and Warrington Borough Council.
Warrington Arts Festival’s mission statement is to ‘celebrate our town through arts, culture, people, and place’ – and in July we did just that blending high quality commissions from local creatives with touring work from all over the world over nine days.
There were certainly lots of wow moments too – from a vibrant throwback to Mr Smiths to the mysterious, spectacular and otherworldly festival finale, Starsaucer!
We welcomed a giant knitted house!
Who got the chance to step inside ‘Grandma’s House’ when it suddenly appeared at Parr Hall after six months of work? This remarkable achievement by Warrington artist Marie Jones was one of the highlights of Warrington Arts Festival but deserved its own mention!
A monument to precious memories and family bonds and created entirely out of neon green and white acrylic yarn, this labour of love was based on her grandmother Margaret’s house.
A total of 113 people from the community helped create the house using digitally hacked Brother KH950i knitting machines – using the lion’s share of a 150kg bulk load of yarn in the process! Truly unique and bespoke to Warrington.
We went big – and spooktacular – at Halloween
The one where we got everyone in Warrington shaking their bones at a big open air, fire-lit concert! There was something strange in our neighbourhood when we invited the community to immerse themselves in some creepy, kooky musical performances surrounded by flickering flames.
Queens Gardens truly came alive for this eerily good open-air concert featuring fearsome fire artists, scary skeletons and special effects. Special thanks to our friends at Walk the Plank and Warrington BID, with support from the government’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund, for making it possible.
We introduced Steph… and a new direction for Warrington Museum
Earlier this year, we were very pleased to welcome Steph Clemens to our team to lead on a fresh vision, strategy and identity for Warrington Museum and Art Gallery.
Bringing with her 20 years’ experience working in and supporting museums in the north west and Cornwall, she’s already settled in really well. Some recent changes have included an emphasis on creative wellbeing and a new app (more on that just below) but that’s just the start with lots more to come.
Warrington Museum? There’s an app for that.
We were delighted to join hundreds of cultural institutions from around the globe in becoming part of Bloomberg Connects, which is used by millions!
Go back in time and around the world with just a few swipes in our quest to be as accessible as possible and reach new people.
The app contains maps to help users find their way around, gallery guides to explain the Museum’s collections while highlighting key objects from its 170,000 artefacts and exhibits and even audio tours put together by our own team! It will also be frequently updated so there’ll always be something new.
We held a huge party for Warrington Pride!
The vibes were immaculate! We always love being part of Warrington Pride but we took it to another level when we hosted the official after party at Parr Hall! The Voice’s cabaret superstar Fatt Butcher brought a stellar line-up of some of the UK’s best independent queer talent as we all stood united under the disco ball! Such a memorable night.
Our Young Producers smashed it!
Our second cohort of 16 young creatives from four different colleges across the town each brought their own skills and interests across visual arts, theatre, film and production to Culture Warrington.
Their talents, new perspectives and hard work has been invaluable across all kinds of projects, particularly during Warrington Arts Festival (WAF). But the Young Producers definitely took things to another level when they hosted their own film festival!
Teaming up with WAF and Cineworld Warrington, they introduced ‘Made By Me’ – a platform for local filmmakers aged 16-25. The Young Producers oversaw every step of the programme, from writing the callout, judging the films and liaising with the budding directors with the screenings attended by 282 audience members!
No pressure then for our third cohort of 14 Young Producers for 2025/26 who recently started with us! Their focus is on developing ideas for the reopening of Pyramid Arts Centre after its £5million revamp.
We developed our…artist development
Supporting Warrington creatives is at the heart of what we do at Culture Warrington. We consider it part of the legacy of Warrington Arts Festival relaunch – our aim is to nurture, sustain and grow a network of Warrington artists giving them the tools they need to create impactful work and for our festival to have lasting and meaningful growth.
So in 2025 we launched a new artists’ development programme creating various workshops, training opportunities, networking events, scratch nights and social events to support our creative community.
Special shout out to COW (Creatives of Warrington) who we have worked closely with this year – supporting their ‘Cowzine’ and developing quarterly upskilling workshops together.
Our Early Years programme has gone from strength-to-strength
It’s been fantastic reaching new audiences, working with a wider network of creatives and providing a service for young families with the development of our Early Years programme.
‘Museum Alive’ was so popular during Warrington Arts Festival – bringing a whole new strand to the event – that we keep it bringing it back to Warrington Museum.
The pop-ups offer performances, stories, crafts and more designed especially for children aged up to five and their grown-ups.
We introduced HeARTful Minds
We’re really proud of this one – our after school programme that uses art and creativity to improve children’s metal health and wellbeing.
We reached 183 participants across 14 Warrington schools for arts sessions run by eight Warrington creatives and it was very rewarding seeing youngsters immerse themselves in all kinds of art forms including filmmaking, mural painting, model building and storytelling.
We then celebrated the year-round programme in style with a big launch and exhibition at Warrington Museum! We’re so grateful to everyone who was involved with this one.
We made new friends and valuable connections at MELA
For 2025’s MELA, we really wanted to celebrate Warrington’s Hong Kong and Ukrainian communities. So thanks to a collaboration with Culture Warrington, we ensured the Warrington Hong Kongers and the Ukrainian Family Hub were fully represented at the event, attended by thousands.
Both groups decorated a tent and hosted interactive workshops within the communities village – inviting people to come and learn about their lives and culture.
Parr Hall turned 130 and Warrington Museum marked a milestone
We love being custodians of some of Warrington’s most historic and characterful buildings. Parr Hall marked its 130th birthday after formally opening on 24 September, 1895, while for Warrington Museum and Art Gallery it’s been 170 years since the foundation stone was laid for the current building on 20 September.
Claire Lloyd Fitzgerald, Chair of Culture Warrington, said: “These buildings are not just bricks and mortar. They are living spaces of creativity, learning and community. Their stories reflect Warrington’s proud heritage and its vibrant cultural future, and we’re honoured to continue building on that legacy.”
Farewell to Maureen and a warm welcome to Claire
It was the end of an era when we announced in May that our much loved Chair Maureen Banner was stepping down after 13 years. With a particular focus in supporting children and young people, Maureen has provided leadership and a guiding hand to our teams since Culture Warrington was established in 2012 – and we couldn’t be more grateful.
However, we’re in safe hands with a new Chair that Maureen thoroughly approves of – Claire Lloyd Fitzgerald. A lifelong Warringtonian and well known in the town, you might be familiar with Claire as a former borough councillor where she represented her home ward of Orford. But from school trips to Warrington Museum with Oakwood Avenue School to gigs at Parr, Claire has also been attending our venues since she was a child,
More recognition for the unstoppable Manda Moore!
We’re so proud of our Education and Sustainability Officer Manda Moore. She’s been leading on sustainability for Culture Warrington for around two years and, before that, she was instrumental in launching the town’s Sky Garden at Golden Square in 2022.
She has also opened people’s eyes to green issues by facilitating training opportunities for Culture Warrington staff such Carbon Literacy, and bringing like-minded people together with the creation of the ‘Warrington Community Gardens’ group.
Highlights this year included launching an exhibition at Warrington Museum – Emergency on Planet Earth – and Sky Garden being declared ‘Outstanding’ in the RHS ‘It’s Your Neighbourhood’ awards for the north west!
Pyramid – watch this space
Firstly, thanks everyone for your patience. We know our Pyramid Arts Centre has been closed for what feels like a long time due to the £5m revamp that’s been going behind-the-scenes since the end of July 2024.
Excitingly, it’s taking shape and we can’t wait to share reopening plans with you as soon as we can. In a nutshell, the aim is to make Pyramid more modern, inclusive and fit-for-purpose. We’ll be able to host bigger gigs, for up to 380 people, in Exhibition Hall while Studio Theatre will have a new bar and an entirely new layout.
Also, crucially, an upgraded power supply to the building and acoustic improvements will allow us to host multiple performances in the venue simultaneously. Pyramid redevelopment project was funded as part of the government’s £3.6billion ‘Town Deal’ and made possible thanks to the building’s owners, Warrington Borough Council.