Author: Duncan Wright

Glossfest 23 is now a distant memory, and with 2024 making way for the Heritage Weekend, do we have to wait for May 25 for more great music in the town?

The simple answer is no!

Whilst there is already some great music going on week by week at venues like The Globe, The Commercial with Demento 66 and The Crystal Ballroom, The Glossfest team were feeling left out, so we have decided to add another venue to the list – The Partington Clubroom.

Following a successful bid to the HPBC Shared Prosperity Fund, we have secured funds to temporarily turn the  clubroom at the Partington into a pop up music venue, and teamed up with the folk at Demento 66 using their expertise and our resources to bring bigger bands to a bigger venue in the town.

The first gig is planned for this Saturday, 13th April and will bring The Climate Stripes to Glossop, with their brand of high energy blues – Tickets available on Whatsoninglossop.com.

With the release of their first album Debut, the band are going from strength to strength, and we are delighted to join them on the next step in their journey.

There is much talk in press at the moment about the struggle facing small music venues, we are planning to leverage the energy of local music enthusiasts to partner with local venues like the Partington  to buck the trend, creating opportunities for bands, technicians and audiences.

The result is the opportunity to enjoy high quality live music at a fraction of the cost of the big arena tours in the knowledge that all precedes are going directly into the hands of the local grass roots music scene.

So if you can’t wait for Glossfest 25, come and join us on 13th April, and sign up to whatsoninglossop.com to keep track of what’s going on in the town.

Together, lets put Glossop on the live music map!

There is no doubt, Glossop has an exciting live music scene. But it lacks a resource to help explore the range of captivating events right at your fingertips?

To help plug this gap we are delighted to re-launch What’s On in Glossop! a dedicated platform designed to promote and celebrate the thriving live music culture in Glossop.

Re-Launching What’s On in Glossop

In a town known for its rich history and artistic spirit, the live music scene in Glossop is amazing with numerous gigs and performances across the town every week of the year. From intimate acoustic performances to high-energy rock concerts, Glossop’s musical offerings cater to a diverse range of tastes and preferences. The re-launch of What’s On in Glossop marks a significant milestone in connecting local artists, music enthusiasts, and event-goers in one central hub.

Before the scene was forced into hibernation by COVID, whatsoninglossop.com was THE go to resource for planning a night out in the town. Now, some three years later, we are planning to claim that spot again.

A Comprehensive Listing of Events

While there are several “What’s On” platforms catering to the wider area, we recognized the need for a dedicated resource that shines a spotlight on Glossop’s unique music scene. Our platform provides a comprehensive and up-to-date listing of events taking place in town, ensuring that you never miss out on a beat. Whether you’re a resident looking for a night out or a visitor eager to experience Glossop’s musical talent, our website is your go-to guide.

From traditional pubs that resonate with folk melodies to modern venues pulsating with the rhythm of contemporary beats, Glossop boasts an eclectic array of live music settings. What’s On in Glossop curates events across genres, making it easier for you to find the perfect night of entertainment that suits your preferences.

Why Choose What’s On in Glossop?

1. Focused on Glossop: While other platforms may cover a broader region, What’s On in Glossop narrows its focus exclusively to this charming town and the surrounding Glossopdale. This specialization allows us to delve deeper into Glossop’s cultural heartbeat and present you with events that truly capture the essence of the town’s live music and arts scene.
2. Comprehensive Listings: Our comprehensive event listing eliminates the need for you to scour multiple sources to stay informed about Glossop’s happenings. Whether it’s the allure of open mic nights or the excitement of headline concerts, we have your interests covered.
3. Curated listings at its heart: Unlike most platforms that heavily rely on organizers to submit and oversee their own listings, we take a proactive approach. While we acknowledge the significance of organizer submissions, we also understand that creating an all-encompassing event compilation requires a more hands-on approach.To achieve this, we’re committed to taking on a substantial role. The What’s On in Glossop team will meticulously curate and manage event listings from key venues across the town. This way, you can trust us to present a thorough and vibrant array of events that truly capture the essence of Glossop’s cultural tapestry.
4. Community-Centric: We understand the importance of community in fostering a thriving music scene. For this reason, we don’t want to restrict the listing to the ones we know about. As a result, our platform encourages local artists, event organizers, and venues to submit their events if they are not listing. You can create a listing here.

Get Involved!

Whether you’re an avid music enthusiast, a local artist looking to promote your gigs, or simply someone curious about exploring Glossop’s cultural offerings, What’s On in Glossop welcomes you with open arms. Join us in celebrating the launch of this exciting platform and become a part of Glossop’s musical journey.

Right now, its an event listing site, but we have bigger plans. Stay connected to our website for the latest event listings, artist spotlights, and behind-the-scenes stories that capture the essence of Glossop’s live music scene. Together, let’s make Glossop the ultimate destination for unforgettable musical experiences!

Visit What’s On in Glossop today and support the local music scene by getting down to a gig. Get ready to tap your feet, sway to the rhythm, and immerse yourself in the soulful melodies that define Glossop’s musical tapestry.

We said we were planning something exciting this year and with that in mind we are excited to announce that in Partnership with the Glossop Round Table, GlossFest is born.

Glossfest is three-day community music festival taking place from 26-28th May 2023 in the Glossop and promises to be an unforgettable experience for visitors and residents alike.

Featuring a diverse line-up of local and national talent across a range of genres such as indie, folk, rock, and blues. The Festival line-up includes Gorilla Riot, Run Out The Guns, and Dark Peak Music, and many more with over 10 bands playing in the town over the weekend. Alongside this there will be performances from local theatre and dance groups including Centre Stage Dance Academy GLOSSOP Limelight Musical Theatre, Dark Peak Music, and evening afterparties at venues across the town. A packed line-up ensuring that there will be something for everyone to enjoy.

In addition to a mix of local bands & music, the festival will also feature a beer festival celebrating the best Local and regional brews, a mix of locally based restaurant and outlets doing food on the square and Henry St, a Bank Holiday Market and a funfair from Funfair and Candyfloss. With all that is going on, the weekend promises a lively and vibrant atmosphere.

Centred on a main stage in Norfolk Square, in the heart of the town GlossFest will take place at various locations throughout the town, allowing visitors to explore the many independent shops and restaurants that Glossop has to offer. Like all our festivals, this year’s festival is free, thanks to the support of our sponsors, Glossop Round Table and Glossop Creative Trust.

Speaking about the event, Duncan Wright from Glossop Creative Trust said, “Building on the success of the Town Hall Sessions in 2017, and last year’s Victorian & Heritage weekend, We’re excited to bring GlossFest to Glossop for the first time. We’ve put together a fantastic line-up of music and activities for everyone to enjoy, and we’re grateful for the amazing support we have had across the town in making this event happen.”

GlossFest is a celebration of the vibrant community spirit of Glossop, and the organisers are committed to ensuring that the festival is a safe and enjoyable experience for everyone.

For more information about GlossFest and to stay up to date with the latest news and updates, visit www.glossfest.com. Follow GlossFest on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more details about the line-up and the festival’s many activities.

It has been an exciting time for us over the last few years and partly through our initiatives, I am happy to say that Glossop is a more creative place than ever.

As it states on our homepage, we aim to to harness this energy and passion of the creative community and to use it to support the economic development of the town.  I believe that over the last couple of years, and with the development and launch of Glossop Creates we have delivered.

With this in mind, I thought it worth devoting a post to looking at what has been achieved since we started working with  what became the Glossop Creates team on the project in 2019. In that time we have:

• Worked with local creatives and placemaking consultants to develop the Glossop Creates Strategy
• recruited Ant Bullivant and OTF creative who developed the Glossop Creates brand on our behalf.
• Supported the writing and securing of the Arts Council England bid, and secured funding form HPBC to support the launch of the project
• Recruited a community Community Producer who has gone on to become a full time place maker in the area
• Worked with the Kin.Der team to secure their new home at Glossop Gasworks, and supported their first few months in their new home to help them get established
• Through all this our partner Claire Tymon had the opportunity, alongside working with us to develop the Glossop Creates initiative, to start her own place making consultancy Local.

Having launched Local, it seemed appropriate that this new organisation, focused on the use of Culture and the Arts in creating a sense of identity n Glossop and across the region, should become new home of Glossop Creates to take it forward.

So what of the future?

For Local & Glossop Creates, they have secured additional ACE funding, which will build on the work that the team have already done, and we look forward to continuing to work with the team on the project going forward.

For us, in 2023, we are looking to focus Live music, as this was an area that was somewhat overlooking by the Glossop Creates programme. In the coming year we hope to work with local musicians, promoters and venues to revitalise the live music scene in the town, that has been so devastated by the events of the last few years. To kick this off,  we are working with the local Round Table group (Organisers of the Manor Park Fireworks, and last years Heritage Weekend festival) to bring back the Town Hall Sessions Music Festival in 2023. Whilst we are still finalising funding for the event, we would hope to be able to make further announcements in the coming weeks

In addition, we will continue to play our part working with organisations like, The Victoria Arts Centre team and High Peak Borough Council  championing the development of Glossop’s public halls into a resource that we hope will become the cultural heart of the town.

The last few years have been Challenging , but at the same time rewarding, and we look forward to playing our roll in the next chapter in the next chapter of Glossop story.

I started the organisation that has now become The Glossop Create Trust over ten years ago. One of my key aims in creating the organisation was to promote Music Arts and Culture and to ensure that it was central to the identity of the town going forward. Whilst this is still a work in progress, I think the current direction of travel, and the events of the past few years suggest we are on the right track.

Glossop has always had a great high street but it currently lacks a focal point, somewhere that celebrates the creativity of the town in a place that attracts locals and visitors alike.

I have always seen the redevelopment of the Town Hall/Market Complex as key in the development of this focal point, and the process of seeking  an operator for the complex brings that vision a step closer.

However, I have always said it’s not about the building, it’s about the people and how they use it! In order to realise our vision, we need to create a vibrant creative economy, supporting and nurturing the types of business that will breathe new life into the Town Hall complex. What’s more, we need to do this now! Even though the opening of the complex could be well into next year.

It is for this reason that, through initiatives like Glossop Creates, we are working hard to support and develop the creative community in the town. It’s also for this reason that we are supporting the Kin.Der initiative. The brainchild of Claire Tymon, in partnership with a number of local creatives, Kin.Der will, among other things, become a base for Glossop Creates’ activities and give us a physical presence on the High Street. But it’s more than that. With a number of local creatives making their home at Kin.Der, it also aims to model some of the activities and uses that we are expecting to transfer to the Town Hall/Market complex when it opens.

Based in Glossop Gasworks on Arundel Street (in the space previously occupied by Wains), Kin.Der aims to be a creative hub, allowing space for creative businesses to ply their trade and interact with the wider community.

As part of our mission to make Glossop an attractive place for creatives, supporting the  is a privilege; especially as it will give us some great experience in how this type of space works, in advance of the opening of the Town Hall\Market Complex.

Big capital projects like the Town Tall and Victoria Hall Arts Centre are easy to get excited about, and it’s easy to see them as separate from initiatives like Glossop Creates and Kin.Der. but, in reality, their successes are totally interdependent. The long-term success of the big projects is totally reliant on the success of the grass roots initiatives. The Town Hall/Market Complex and Victoria Arts Centre projects will only succeed if they exist as hubs within a thriving, creative community that is nurtured by initiatives like Glossop Creates and Kin.Der. These will, in turn, need the capital projects to succeed to give them a sustainable future. It’s a cliché, but it’s win:win!

My hope is that in a year or so, Kin.Der will have outgrown their current home at the Gasworks and will be ready, with other similar organisations nurtured through the activities of Glossop Creates, to become part of a thriving creative hub in the Town Hall/Market Complex.

As a community we may not be able to be directly involved in the day-to-day development of the big projects, but we can help make them a success by supporting and enabling cultural and creative growth at the grass roots of the town. At the same time, the Glossop Creative Trust, is working with the council to make sure that the creative community has significant input into the big projects.

If you would like to get involved and support any of our activities, we would love to hear from you to talk about either sponsorship, or simply getting involved.

In my last post, I talked about how collaboration between Glossop’s Creatives had allowed us to submit a significant bid to the Community Renewal fund in record time. We are now 2 months on from submitting that bid, and sadly we were not successful. But for me that is not important.

The substance of the bid

Despite being unsuccessful, the Community Renewal Fund (CRF) bid, which ultimately came in at a little over £1.2m was a piece of work that I was proud to be associated with. It brought together close to 20 high quality proposals from a dozen or so local community organisations, and demonstrated the depth and breadth of the creative talent in the town.

The feedback received from Derbyshire County Council was in general very positive and encouraging, describing the substance of the submission as highly credible and professional.

Ultimately, the bid failed because we were being too ambitious and they were not convinced of our ability to deliver such a substantial programme within the challenging timescales required by the CRF programme. An assessment with which, in the cold light of day, I would struggle to argue!

Why so upbeat about a failed bid?

For me, whether you win or lose a particular “battle” is not that important. What is more important is are you on the right path to achieve your long term goals. The process of putting together the bid definitely took us in the right direction in terms of what we are trying to achieve in the town. It build and strengthened relationships in the creative community and brought forward a number of great ideas that are now poised on the starting blocks, waiting for the resources to take them forward.

It has also developed our relationship with DCC and HPBC in a very positive way.

In addition to the above we learned a lot about the process of applying for and priorities of the grant funding bodies which will help us over the coming months and years when new opportunities arise

On to the future

So where do we go from here? – Our objective is still to build an organic and flexible community of creative individuals and organisations who want to enhance Glossop and the surrounding area by making it a place where creativity is nurtured and allowed to thrive.

Alongside that we want to ensure that the heritage buildings in the town (specifically The Town Hall/Market complex and Victoria Hall) become key assets, used (and maybe run) by the local creative community.

Ultimately our aim is that through all of this we make Glossop a more fun and interesting place to live and work.

How to get involved

To make this a reality, we will need outside help and funding. Amongst other things, working on the CRF bid has raised our ambitions and made us keen to sustain the core paid team we now have in place. In the short term I am sure we will be able to secure resources to achieve this through bids to public funds like the Community Renewal Fund. I am also confident that what we learned from our recent bid to the CRF will lead to successful bids in the future.

But to be sustainable it can not and should not rely solely on grant funding. The vision needs to be owned and driven and yes paid for by the community. Whilst we already have a dedicated community of people helping to make this vision a reality, there is always room for more.

If you want to get involved, or simply want us to keep you updated with what is going on, then become a Member or Supporter of the Glossop Creative Trust. If on the other hand, you run a local business, and would like to support our vision financially, then we have some great sponsorship opportunities, that we would love to talk to you about.

If you have been following our progress over the last 12 months, you will have seen us launch the Glossop Creates initiative.

The brainchild of a group of Glossop creatives, and supported by funding from both High Peak Borough Council and Arts Council England, Glossop Creates aims to develop an identity for the town around the fantastic creatives that live here.

Glossop is a creative place. But sometimes I think its is easy to overlook the fact as its creativity is hidden. In studios, in offices & in the homes of those busy being creative.

The thinking behind Glossop creates was to nurture this creativity by supporting our creative community, and celebrating their work.

It’s about more than Buildings

As we try to create a cohesive vision for Glossop, its easy to think that its all about the buildings. Indeed, my last two posts have been about just that. But whilst Victoria Hall and the Town Hall complex are both vital pieces of the jigsaw, they do not have a future if they do not become the beating heart of a creative community.

Enter Glossop Creates.

In parallel with the work with partners (HPBC for the town Hall, and VAC/FOVH for Victoria Hall) to refurbish and bring the halls back into use, Glossop Creates aims to develop and support the creative community that will one day be key users of these buildings.

The Heritage Angle

Yes, today Glossop has a vibrant creative community, but it also has a rich heritage. A heritage that is rooted in the creativity of the industrial revolution.

Throughout its history, Glossop has been associated with creatives. From Beatrix Potter, who’s Grandfather Edmund owned a Calico printing works in Dinting, and who sent printed Calico to his granddaughter which she used to dress her toys, the inspiration behind her magical stories. To LS Lowry, who lived locally and died in Woods Hospital, and Vivienne Westwood who grew up in the town and likely took exams in Victoria Hall.

Forward to today, and the town is home to may writers, Artists, Musicians and other Creatives, both established, and up and coming.

Our hope is that Glossop Creates will deliver a town where creativity is nurtured and celebrated. Creating an environment that will inspire and encourage the next generation of Lowry’s, Potter’s and Westwood’s.

If you want to learn more about Glossop Creates, sign up as a member & supporter, and we will keep you up to date