A multi-million pound arts centre will also help hundreds of adults learn new skills and qualification.
Arts Centre Keighley is being developed in a former department store on Hanover Street, opposite the town’s Airedale Shopping Centre, and is due to open later this year.
It is being partially funded through the Keighley Towns Fund.
As well as having exhibition, studio, performance and workshop space and a “street gallery” the venue will also have space for adult learning, with courses run by Keighley College.
The College has now announced details about the first classes and other services it will be offering.
The Arts Centre Keighley is being created by converting the former Beales department store, and will provide a base for arts charity Keighley Creative.
The work is being funded by a £2.6m grant from the Keighley Towns Fund, administered by Bradford Council; £1.27m from the Community Ownership Fund; £906,000 through Keighley College and £250,000 from Bradford 2025’s Cultural Capital Fund.
A purpose-built section of the centre will, from September, run courses designed to help adults into work or further training.
Those will include CV writing, digital and IT proficiency, English and maths, teaching assistant classes and more – along with an Access to Higher Education (Art and Design) Diploma.
College Principal Kevin O’Hare said:
“The Arts Centre Keighley will become a new ‘front door’ to learning, creativity and opportunity in the heart of the town, bringing together education, culture and community under one roof.
We are thrilled to be a part of it. The building will provide a fantastic base for our college to run a whole raft of courses designed to help adults back into work, or onto the path to something completely new – and we will also have a National Careers Service presence.
We expect hundreds of adult learners, including those who are perhaps economically inactive right now and have felt locked out of opportunities, to benefit from the courses we’ll be delivering from the new town-centre location each year.”
Keighley Creative will be the main tenant of the centre, occupying around three quarters of the space. Co-chair Georgina Webster said:
“This is an exciting time for our town, with The Arts Centre Keighley providing first-class facilities for creativity for local people and the wider region in an imaginative repurposing of a former department store.
We look forward to working alongside Keighley College and welcoming the people of the town into a superb centre with two galleries, a Keighley Creative education room, multi-use room and more than 20 studios for artists to further their craft.”
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