Creative Takeover weekend comes to Crewe

‘Creative Takeover’ weekend comes to Crewe for half term

Cheshire East Council is working with Crewe Cultural Forum to organise a ‘Creative Takeover Weekend’ at Lyceum Square in Crewe to kick off the half term holiday break this month.

The event will be hosted by creative practitioners ’64 Million Artists’ – who will be working alongside a new team of local cultural volunteers known as ‘Creative Champions.’

The Creative Champions have already received training to help develop their event hosting skills, with the focus being on how to start conversations about creative programming and providing a foundation in understanding how to open up community discussions on engaging with culture.

The weekend will include a variety of creative installations and engagement activity, focused around Lyceum Square, to help stimulate conversations with local people about how they would like to engage with culture, creativity and heritage in Crewe and what they might like to see in creative and community spaces in the future.

All this activity is happening at a really busy time for Lyceum Square with the council’s Pride event also taking place on Saturday 22 October.

Crewe Cultural Forum is a key partner for the weekend activities. The forum – formed in 2018 – is a working partnership group made up of a wide range of community members, businesses and residents, who all agreed that there was both a significant opportunity and benefit in the growing cultural sector in coming together to work collaboratively.

The forum developed the Crewe Cultural Strategy, which was formally endorsed by both Cheshire East Council and Crewe Town Council.

The Crewe takeover weekend activities include:

• An augmented reality art trail

-An interactive installation of bee hives;
-Decorative window art adorning windows on businesses around the square by Victoria’s Art Studio;
-Walkabout interactive performers The Alpaca Backpackers;
-Interactive ‘doodleboards’ from local artist Jay Neville; and
-Performances from the Crewe Lyceum Youth Theatre

The activities are being put on to inspire and ignite conversation ahead of planned developments on Lyceum Square, which will create more space and facilities for creative and cultural activity.

The weekend’s events will take place around the Lyceum Square, Market Hall and surrounding area. This will also coincide with an opportunity for residents to give feedback on the design of a proposed new wall mural at Lyceum Square.

The council is welcoming residents and visitors to pop in and see our Creative Champions for a chat in the market sheds and to catch the activity on the following days and times: Saturday 22 October from 10am-2pm and Sunday 23 October from 12-4pm.

To learn more about the work of Crewe Cultural Forum or to find out how you can become a creative champion, please get in touch by emailing CreweCulturalForum@CheshireEast.gov.uk