I had a sneak preview of Creative Crawley's new space in County Mall and it is nothing like the town has seen or had before

On Friday, March 28, Creative Crawley are launching their very exciting Spring programme – and they have a new space in County Mall to provide culture, art and performances to the people of Crawley.

And this week I got a sneak preview of the space – in unit 79/80 of County Mall, next to where Debenhams used to be – and I was astonished by the sheer size and and scale of it. It’s nothing like Crawley has seen or had before. You can watch Becky Jones’ guided tour of the space here.

It is flexible space that has a long gallery, performance areas, projection screens and greenhouse and much more, including a sound booth run by Audio Active.

I was blown away by the space and it’s easy to see why Creative Crawley’s founder and creative director Louise Blackwell and her colleagues are so excited about the space – and the launch of their Spring programme.

Creative Crawley came into existence in 2021 and Louise, who is self-proclaimed ‘Crawley girl’, explained why. “We exist to support creative people and to bring high quality, exciting arts activity to the town,” she said. “We support local creative professionals but also people who want to just give art a go and who are kind of hobbyists and we are hoping that by the work that we do we sort of raise the profile of the town and also make people feel a bit better and happier and more confident and basically have a good time.”

And Louise was very enthusiastic about the new space. “We're in the heart of this glorious palace of shopping and you can come in here and you don't have to buy anything, you can just

hang out in the foyer and have your lunch and hopefully feel comfortable. If you want to see some of the exhibitions and take part great but you don't have to.

"It's hopefully a place where people can come and take part and we're working here in partnership with Audio Active who are a youth music company, who are really brilliant and they're running their workshops, there's a sound booth, recording studios so hopefully lots of young people will come here too. It's a really exciting moment, I hope everyone grasps it with both hands and takes part.”

So why was the space designed like it is? Sam Evans, head of learning and production explained. "We worked quite closely with a long-term collaborator, designer and production manager who we sort of fed a few ideas of what it is we need as an organisation and what we've learnt from the needs of the town and the people,” he said.

"He came back with some incredible designs that got us really excited. And we went through a process of taking some things out, adding a few things in and we've ended up with a space that is super flexible and available for many different events, activities, different configurations. We could have a performance that takes up the whole space or we could have a really small intimate performance in one of our little zone areas.”

And the space will be showcased to the public with it’s Spring Programme launch on Friday, March 28 (3.30pm-6pm), and community producer Becky Jones can’t wait. “It’s really exciting and I'm particularly excited about this spring programme because there's such a diversity of different artists and different projects.

First, we have a dance spectacle, It's a dance show by Requardt and Rosenberg, who we've previously worked with to present work here in Crawley in Memorial Gardens back in 2022 and they are bringing their dance show Super Normal, Extra Natural which is this incredible spectacle.

“It's not going to be actually taking place in the unit, it's going to be just outside so right as you look down from the upper mall in County Mall and you look down, that's where it will be and the dancers will be on the escalators and moving around and basically it's very similar to like a flash mob, it will just spring up.”

There are shows on Friday, Saturday March 29, and Sunday March 30.

Also on the launch weekend, there is an exhibition in the long gallery called Making the Invisible Visible by Eric MacLennan. He's worked with four different community groups to talk about connection and personal objects and the stories around that. Becky said: “It's going to display some of their objects, recordings of their stories and transcripts to really bring home the extraordinary ordinariness of the everyday so that's going to be a really exciting exhibition in here.”

Becky also enthused about Leap Then Look’s latest exhibition. “Visual artists Leap Then Look are bringing an exhibition called Play, Interact, Explore. If you're like me, you go to art galleries sometimes and step over that line and the light goes off and the buzzer starts going and you're like, ‘oh no, what have I done?’ and it makes you feel really uneasy, a little bit embarrassing. This piece of work, this exhibition is the antithesis of that. You can touch it, you can play with it, you can pick things up, you can experiment and it's meant to be sort of removing that barrier.”

Those exhibitions are just a small sample of the full Spring Programme, which is all completely free for the people of Crawley.

Sam said: “I’m really excited. I've been working on this project in Crawley now for four years and it sort of feels like we're coming to the head of something and from there we'd like to see something grow, something come out of it. Whoever might come through the doors, it could be the start of a journey for them that sort of takes them on another creative journey and hopefully more to come.”

The space will be christened by a brand new sculpture from the celebrated local artist, Abdollah Nafisi. Commissioned by Creative Crawley, the piece named ‘The Surgeon’ is a dialogue between material, sound, and time. Nafisi has utilised old Sussex chair making techniques to craft industrial wood in a work that “considers the forest as a symphony of survival”. More details on The Surgeon here.

You can find out more about the other performances, workshops and exhibitions here and for more information on Creative Crawley, visit https://creativecrawley.com/.

You can see full interviews with Louise, Becky and Sam at the top of this page.