Riaz and Steph's wedding fundraiser for Keighley Creative

Last year I took a sabbatical from my filmmaking and took over as head of the arts charity Keighley Creative.

Keighley Creative offers artist studios, runs health and wellbeing art therapy courses, and works with young people in Keighley, giving them much needed artistic opportunities. Keighley itself is a former mill-town that has seen better days. Keighley Central is the 125th most deprived ward in England (out of 32,844!). But the town has a vibrant community of artists, and Keighley Creative builds on this to help brighten up the town and serve the artistic needs of its diverse and multi-cultural population.

We are a small charity with big ambitions. We want to build a new community arts centre for the town and expand the work we do, so we really need any support you can give.

I've been involved with the charity as a volunteer and Trustee since 2018, and decided last year to help steer the charity through 2025, a year that will see us play a major part in Bradford's Capital of Culture and, with enough support, complete the building of our new arts centre.

Here's the film of our recent Pledges to the Landscape project, which saw us work with the primary schools in Keighley on a very special art and nature conservancy project