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Sara Trentham and Karen Durham describe an Arts Council England collaboration with local people on a project aimed at bringing out the best in a community.

At first glance, Castleford, a former mining town in West Yorkshire, seems to fulfil many of the criteria for a deprived area. Castlefords public realm has been significantly degraded, and includes one ward that is within the bottom 5% of areas, according to the Governments multiple deprivation indices. Added to this is unemployment caused by the loss of the mining industry, with those jobs replaced by lower paid and part-time jobs. Despite all this, a wealth of cultural networks have managed to thrive here through strong community organisations. It was this spirit that led Channel 4 to select Castleford for a culturally-led regeneration project, filmed for a documentary series to be broadcast in 2008. The Castleford Project is a partnership between Channel 4, Wakefield Council and community groups. It has sought to create a regeneration initiative that has levered in over £11m to achieve eleven improvement schemes, and more than £170m extra private and public investment in the town in four years.

So why is the Arts Council involved? Because it believes that artists make a positive, creative contribution to urban design, and that artists have a unique role to play in responding to place in its fullest sense physical, social and human. Arts Council England, Yorkshire has been a partner in The Castleford Project from near the start, investing over £170,000 in artist interventions. We made a conscious decision not to impose a single model, but instead to consider a range of ways in which artists could contribute to the project from community projects to international commissions, and including both temporary interventions and projects with a lasting legacy.

Interventions supported by the Arts Council include:

- community-focused projects, including metalsmith Chris Campbells work at The Green, and artworks developed as part of the Castleford Heritage Trails by local artists Harry Malkin and Ian Clayton
- collaborations between artists Pierre Vivant and Martin Richman with Hudson Architects and DSDHA Architects respectively
- investment in the Sagar Street community centre to build cultural links across the Wakefield district
- commissioning, with Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Winter & Horbelts Cratehouse for Castleford a pavilion constructed from shipping containers and crates and Cuban artist, Carlos Garaicoa, to work with residents to create a proposal for an imagined future for the town.

The project has demonstrated that this is not a one-sided process led by the Arts Council, but rather that place-making is forged by partnership. The town has evidenced over the past four years that its people are engaged with a transformational project to place arts and culture at the centre of an urban regeneration programme. Ten thousand individuals, out of a local population of 80,000, have contributed in some way to the project.

We have all learnt much about working with multiple partners, and with limited time and resources. The process has stimulated not just the attention of the wider world, but has also transformed many of those involved. The Arts Councils role has not just been to facilitate delivery of projects, but to articulate what Castleford means to its residents.

At one point Carlos Garaicoa visited Castleford during the Venice Biennale, where his work featured prominently. His visit came between other meetings in Moscow and Barcelona, but Castleford was not shoehorned in between these ostensibly more glamorous locations. Residents have said that Garaicoa understands what a community aspires to and how they value the past as well as the present. Is this a deprived community? Perhaps of place, but not in people or aspiration.

Sara Trentham is Visual Arts Officer and Karen Durham is Regional Partnerships Officer at Arts Council England, Yorkshire.