The Dearne Community Arts’ Festival is a grassroots community festival which reflects a love for creativity and community. All too often, the Dearne area receives negative press for vandalism, violence and bigotry, but the festival seeks to highlight all that is positive and good in our area. Many local residents are involved in artistic creativity and are the ‘salt of the earth’, showing friendship, compassion, care and encouragement to others. The festival is an opportunity to showcase their talents and bring like-minded people of all ages together, demonstrating that inclusivity and community are the best ways to build wellbeing and end social isolation.

The festival arose out of a desire to show the world all that is positive, wholesome and colourful in Goldthorpe and the surrounding area. Local resident Julie Turner, working alongside community groups, other residents and the Dearne Area Team, facilitates the event each year as part of her conviction that people are made in God’s image and God is a creative God! The arts’ festival remains a way of trading beauty for ashes, bringing colour, vibrancy and hope to an area which has seen disappointment, disillusionment and deprivation, yet refuses defiantly to be defined by these things.

A small committee of like-minded individuals works tirelessly behind the scenes each month to ensure that the arts’ festival receives the funding it needs to put on the festival and to bring top quality artists to the event. Thanks are given to Anita Heatherglen, Herlen Schreuder, Alison Vint, Shirley Swales, Jenny Yates, Ann Toy and Julia Harris, who have given unstintingly of their time and energy over the years. We have been glad to welcome new volunteers Penny Webb and Garry Turner more recently.

We are thankful also for the funders and volunteers who make things happen and to the family support which enables the festival to take place each year.

Above all, we thank the creatives who participate each year in the arts’ festival, who open our eyes to new worlds and whose talents make our world a better place. Without you, there would be no arts’ festival and much less community. Thank you for who you are and for all you do.