It was the summer of 2021, and I found myself freelancing again – the kind of ‘freedom’ that comes with spreadsheets in cafés and the occasional existential wobble in the supermarket queue. But amidst the chaos, a seed of clarity began to take root: how could I build a practice that supported Glossop Creates – a project I’d started in 2018 with some brilliant, local creatives – and make it sustainable for the long term?

Glossop Creates had grown from a hunch and a few conversations into a living, breathing cultural ecology. By 2020, we’d secured Arts Council funding and brought on a Community Producer to help coordinate network events and stir up some creative buzz. But then… well, you know. Global pandemic, lockdowns and Zoom fatigue. Our grand plans for in-person events and collective dreaming were, for a while, on ice.

By 2021, with Steven Dexter (Creative Producer extraordinaire) taking the reins on Glossop Creates and a few other projects gathering steam, I had space to think big again. Or rather, think local.

The name Local had been quietly following me around for a while. My work has always been about place – rooted in real communities, with local artists, businesses and collaborators. And let’s face it, we’re based in Hadfield, Glossop – home of The League of Gentlemen (which famously took a very different view of 'local’!). And so, Local officially stuck and became the name of the company I founded in 2021 – a local creative placemaking practice for local people everywhere. (But don't worry, our version of local is a little less comedy-horror and more community-led creativity!)

So, why Local?

Because we believe the most meaningful change starts close to home. Our small-but-mighty team flexes depending on the project, but our principles stay put: recruit locally, collaborate meaningfully and build trust through lived experience. When someone from a place helps shape its future, people feel it. And they join in.

We use local suppliers whenever we can – designers, printers, signwriters, cake-bakers (essential), you name it. We’ve worked inside local government and alongside it, so we understand the dance of strategy, spreadsheets and service delivery. But we also know how creativity can rewire systems to make them more human, joyful, and just.

And ultimately, success for us isn’t measured in press coverage or follower counts. It’s the quiet stuff. The skills built. The confidence sparked. The legacy that sticks around long after the funding’s gone. The sense that a place feels more like home to more people.

This matters because people deserve to be heard. To have a say in what happens where they live. Over the years, we’ve worked in more than 20 places with hundreds of collaborators – artists, residents, policy-makers, makers of all kinds, - and what we’ve seen time and again is that when people are invited in with care and creativity, they respond with insight, bold ideas, and a sense of shared ownership.

We’ll be using this journal to share more of that, to document our work, reflect on our values in action, and show how art, culture and design can connect people to place, inform policy change and help create more equitable futures. Whether the impact is immediate or unfolds slowly over time, we believe it’s worth paying attention to.

That’s why Local.