"It is the most unusual start to a new job I’ve had"
In conversation with Rebekah Fozard,
Creative Producer of Hebden Bridge Arts Festival
Q. How has your first month been at Hebden Bridge Arts Festival? What have you been up to?
It's been really interesting in the sense that all of my work with my colleagues and with the trustees has been remote so far; I’ve not met a single person in the flesh which is a strange start. I have had lots of online meetings with other arts organisations, community groups and voluntary organisations in the local area to find out what they’re doing and to sow the seeds for possible future joint working. I have met with Calderdale Council and Hebden Royd Town Council, both of which are funders of our current project, had meetings with trustees and of course, I am collaborating with Clare, our Project Manager, and Lisa, our Administrator and Company Secretary, on the current project we are running, which is called Land Marks.
So, with this being my fifth week, I am starting to think about a strategic plan, the budgets for the next three years, the next cycle of funding that we’re applying for and shaping our next creative project. So, whilst it has been busy and really exciting, it is the most unusual start to a new job I’ve had, because all of the induction process has been virtual. I can’t wait for things to get back to normal so I can start having actual meetings with a cup of coffee!
Q. What made you decide to apply for the role of a Creative Producer at HBAF?
I suppose it is the next step on my creative career journey. My first love is definitely in the arts and all manner of creativity. At school I did photography, drama, art, and music, and one of my first jobs was at Harrogate Theatre. At university I ran a film society but, in my twenties, after I spent six years training and qualifying as a solicitor, then another seven years practising as a solicitor, I was already thinking about what to do next because, whilst being a solicitor was intellectually stimulating but it wasn’t creatively exciting to me.
I knew I needed to make every day at work count and make sure I felt like I was doing something that I really valued and felt worthwhile, so at the age of 30, I started to retrain, whilst working part time. I did a masters in ‘Culture, Creativity and Entrepreneurship’, volunteered with the Friends of Hebden Bridge Picture House, and got a job at Square Chapel Arts Centre as Volunteer Co-ordinator and Development Assistant, to learn how that organisation and arts charities more generally operated. Since then, I have worked for nine years running a large single screen independent cinema for a parish council, done some consultancy work and volunteered my time for a cinema and arts centre in Shropshire.
The pandemic has definitely re-focused my mind, and what’s important to me right now is having a really interesting and creatively exciting day job but also having flexibility with my time, and making sure I meet lots of interesting people and feeling like I’m really contributing to the community. So, this role appealed to me because I love where I live, I adore Hebden Bridge and the Calder Valley: we’ve been here as a family since 2009, and this role included all the aspects of previous jobs I enjoyed and didn’t involve all the bits I wasn’t so keen on.
If I took all the things I loved about my old cinema job, they’re all here in this role: putting people together, creating programmes that are exciting, delivering projects and organising. I decided to work on a freelance basis before I saw this job advertised and so the freelance nature of the role is ideal for me. Being the new Creative Producer is absolutely where all my passion, enthusiasm and effort is going right now, and it’s brilliant as I’m very much a people person, and this is very much a people centric job.
Q. What are you most excited about working on this year?
So, this year there isn’t going to be an arts festival in the traditional sense. Our next project is all about climate emergency and our creative response to dealing with it. We’ll be having a launch day in June and then be busy with projects related to that, working towards a festival weekend in the summer of 2023.
Our current project, Land Marks, working with six community groups, will result in an exhibition at Hardcastle Crags at Gibson Mill in April. We have got another strand of the Land Marks project continuing on after April: Crossings, which has some public walks and workshops and encourages people to make photo submissions on the theme of crossings we encounter in our landscapes. This will lead to a public exhibition of photography that will be touring local communities in June.
In terms of the next couple of years I’m looking forward to partnerships made through Land Marks and new ventures from our next project developing, and I hope to be hearing from lots of other people in the community, community groups and voluntary organisations whose interest is piqued by what we are doing. We are looking to spark some great conversations and develop brilliant collaborative ideas. That’s what I’m most excited about: a project that is collaborative and creative at every stage and we are going to start that journey this June!
In the meantime, I’m really enjoying the work that Clare has started and is now in full swing on Land Marks. I have taken on just one of those six projects which is Underlands with Time Out. This is a four-session project for 10–14 year-olds to find out more about the wood-wide-web, so the networks that are happening under our feet when we go for a walk in the woods, in which fungi, plants, trees and microorganisms are communicating with and supporting each other. The young people are going to be creating art works, sculpture, visual and written, and this will form part of the fantastic exhibition in April.
Q. What sort of things have been planned for 2022?
The real focus of the arts festival going forward is working with partner organisations and community groups to enhance everybody’s well-being through creativity and particularly explore how our landscape and having a home in this valley makes people feel, what are responsibilities to nature are and how people feel about their own creativity.
A lot of people will say “I’m not very creative” and then you’ll give them the opportunity to join in something that is pretty risk free and suddenly they’ll realise that they really are. That focussing on your own creativity can be very healing.
It can be a really good starting point for forging relationships with people, so the focus at this moment is less on events and performance, and much more about connecting people and helping them to create things then sharing the output of those creative journeys.
We will be having events and performances again, of course, but right now, and very much as a response to the pandemic and people being unable to participate in the same way and gather en masse, what we’ve been doing is working with people on a smaller group basis to help them. So, we are really excited to share that work with the public via our exhibitions in April and June, and in the very near future there will be a lot of new opportunities for people to engage directly with what we are doing.
Q. Is there anything else you would like to share?
One of my takeaways of the Creative Producer role is that the trustees have been holding the fort for two years so that they, and particularly the Co-Chairs, have been doing most of the work that an organisation’s management team would typically have done. I am really grateful to the trustees for all they have done to keep HBAF going and I suppose I am aware that, as I’m not taking over from anyone in the usual handover sense, there is work to be done in terms of developing strategy and approach. This is why I really want to have lots of conversations with other groups and people locally to ensure we’re not treading on anyone’s toes or doing something that clashes with other people’s plans but also I’m aware of all the opportunities to collaborate and work in partnership that are out there. I’m ready to listen.
I don’t think the arts festival is going to be any one ‘thing’ in the future, and I think for all of us, that’s a valuable and exciting prospect.
It's been really interesting in the sense that all of my work with my colleagues and with the trustees has been remote so far; I’ve not met a single person in the flesh which is a strange start. I have had lots of online meetings with other arts organisations, community groups and voluntary organisations in the local area to find out what they’re doing and to sow the seeds for possible future joint working. I have met with Calderdale Council and Hebden Royd Town Council, both of which are funders of our current project, had meetings with trustees and of course, I am collaborating with Clare, our Project Manager, and Lisa, our Administrator and Company Secretary, on the current project we are running, which is called Land Marks.
So, with this being my fifth week, I am starting to think about a strategic plan, the budgets for the next three years, the next cycle of funding that we’re applying for and shaping our next creative project. So, whilst it has been busy and really exciting, it is the most unusual start to a new job I’ve had, because all of the induction process has been virtual. I can’t wait for things to get back to normal so I can start having actual meetings with a cup of coffee!
Q. What made you decide to apply for the role of a Creative Producer at HBAF?
I suppose it is the next step on my creative career journey. My first love is definitely in the arts and all manner of creativity. At school I did photography, drama, art, and music, and one of my first jobs was at Harrogate Theatre. At university I ran a film society but, in my twenties, after I spent six years training and qualifying as a solicitor, then another seven years practising as a solicitor, I was already thinking about what to do next because, whilst being a solicitor was intellectually stimulating but it wasn’t creatively exciting to me.
I knew I needed to make every day at work count and make sure I felt like I was doing something that I really valued and felt worthwhile, so at the age of 30, I started to retrain, whilst working part time. I did a masters in ‘Culture, Creativity and Entrepreneurship’, volunteered with the Friends of Hebden Bridge Picture House, and got a job at Square Chapel Arts Centre as Volunteer Co-ordinator and Development Assistant, to learn how that organisation and arts charities more generally operated. Since then, I have worked for nine years running a large single screen independent cinema for a parish council, done some consultancy work and volunteered my time for a cinema and arts centre in Shropshire.
The pandemic has definitely re-focused my mind, and what’s important to me right now is having a really interesting and creatively exciting day job but also having flexibility with my time, and making sure I meet lots of interesting people and feeling like I’m really contributing to the community. So, this role appealed to me because I love where I live, I adore Hebden Bridge and the Calder Valley: we’ve been here as a family since 2009, and this role included all the aspects of previous jobs I enjoyed and didn’t involve all the bits I wasn’t so keen on.
If I took all the things I loved about my old cinema job, they’re all here in this role: putting people together, creating programmes that are exciting, delivering projects and organising. I decided to work on a freelance basis before I saw this job advertised and so the freelance nature of the role is ideal for me. Being the new Creative Producer is absolutely where all my passion, enthusiasm and effort is going right now, and it’s brilliant as I’m very much a people person, and this is very much a people centric job.
Q. What are you most excited about working on this year?
So, this year there isn’t going to be an arts festival in the traditional sense. Our next project is all about climate emergency and our creative response to dealing with it. We’ll be having a launch day in June and then be busy with projects related to that, working towards a festival weekend in the summer of 2023.
Our current project, Land Marks, working with six community groups, will result in an exhibition at Hardcastle Crags at Gibson Mill in April. We have got another strand of the Land Marks project continuing on after April: Crossings, which has some public walks and workshops and encourages people to make photo submissions on the theme of crossings we encounter in our landscapes. This will lead to a public exhibition of photography that will be touring local communities in June.
In terms of the next couple of years I’m looking forward to partnerships made through Land Marks and new ventures from our next project developing, and I hope to be hearing from lots of other people in the community, community groups and voluntary organisations whose interest is piqued by what we are doing. We are looking to spark some great conversations and develop brilliant collaborative ideas. That’s what I’m most excited about: a project that is collaborative and creative at every stage and we are going to start that journey this June!
In the meantime, I’m really enjoying the work that Clare has started and is now in full swing on Land Marks. I have taken on just one of those six projects which is Underlands with Time Out. This is a four-session project for 10–14 year-olds to find out more about the wood-wide-web, so the networks that are happening under our feet when we go for a walk in the woods, in which fungi, plants, trees and microorganisms are communicating with and supporting each other. The young people are going to be creating art works, sculpture, visual and written, and this will form part of the fantastic exhibition in April.
Q. What sort of things have been planned for 2022?
The real focus of the arts festival going forward is working with partner organisations and community groups to enhance everybody’s well-being through creativity and particularly explore how our landscape and having a home in this valley makes people feel, what are responsibilities to nature are and how people feel about their own creativity.
A lot of people will say “I’m not very creative” and then you’ll give them the opportunity to join in something that is pretty risk free and suddenly they’ll realise that they really are. That focussing on your own creativity can be very healing.
It can be a really good starting point for forging relationships with people, so the focus at this moment is less on events and performance, and much more about connecting people and helping them to create things then sharing the output of those creative journeys.
We will be having events and performances again, of course, but right now, and very much as a response to the pandemic and people being unable to participate in the same way and gather en masse, what we’ve been doing is working with people on a smaller group basis to help them. So, we are really excited to share that work with the public via our exhibitions in April and June, and in the very near future there will be a lot of new opportunities for people to engage directly with what we are doing.
Q. Is there anything else you would like to share?
One of my takeaways of the Creative Producer role is that the trustees have been holding the fort for two years so that they, and particularly the Co-Chairs, have been doing most of the work that an organisation’s management team would typically have done. I am really grateful to the trustees for all they have done to keep HBAF going and I suppose I am aware that, as I’m not taking over from anyone in the usual handover sense, there is work to be done in terms of developing strategy and approach. This is why I really want to have lots of conversations with other groups and people locally to ensure we’re not treading on anyone’s toes or doing something that clashes with other people’s plans but also I’m aware of all the opportunities to collaborate and work in partnership that are out there. I’m ready to listen.
I don’t think the arts festival is going to be any one ‘thing’ in the future, and I think for all of us, that’s a valuable and exciting prospect.