Where: Fenland and West Suffolk - March, Whittlesey, Chatteris, Wisbech, Brandon, Newmarket, and Mildenhall
With: Babylon ARTS deliver MarketPlace as the lead consortium partner.  Other consortium partners are Cambridgeshire Acre, Norfolk and Norwich Festival Bridge, Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds and Wisbech Town Council. MarketPlace is supported by Cambridgeshire County Council, Fenland District Council, Suffolk County Council and West Suffolk Council.

MarketPlace has people at its heart.  It’s about encouraging local people to get involved and share decisions about what creative activities happen where they live, sometimes in unexpected places. We want to get more people creating and experiencing great art in Fenland and West Suffolk.

Working with communities in the seven market towns of Brandon, Chatteris, March, Mildenhall, Newmarket, Whittlesey and Wisbech since 2015, MarketPlace has put local people at the centre of what we do. We support and encourage creative activity in each town, giving residents opportunities to make art and culture part of their everyday lives. 

The MarketPlace team includes Creative Agents who work directly with local people and communities to explore ideas. Our Creative Agents play a key role supporting and facilitating creative conversations, introducing ideas and opportunities that may make unexpected things happen.

We established Creative Forums in our towns to give local people a platform to share ideas and network. These groups and forums are made up of residents of all ages including those with little or no previous arts engagement. The MarketPlace team work with our creative forums to develop their skills as individuals working in their own communities.  The forums make decisions on what activities take place, and have an important part in helping to make them happen. 

An example of our recent work includes supporting the Brandon Creative Forum to stage an ambitious one-day family arts event: Tales and Trails Festival. We supported the forum to commission four new pieces of art for the Festival including site-specific installations and interactive work that would engage festival-goers. Local people were involved in developing the artist brief, the selection process and in contributing to the work created by the selected artists. 

We also work with creative practitioners and artists across the area to develop their skills, and to support the network with local people and organisations. 

By bringing together different audiences and interest groups, and working with a range of partners, we aim to support the development of a vibrant and sustainable arts ecology across our market towns.

The film below gives a flavour of the MarketPlace work with communities across Fenland and West Suffolk.  MarketPlace is very much a collaborative project, working with a range of partner, and with expanding networks and new initiatives firmly on the horizon. There are many ways to get involved – join the Creative Forums, subscribe to the MarketPlace newsletter, or follow Market Place on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter to find out more.