National Festival of Making 2024

The National Festival of Making is a unique celebration of UK making, from the kitchen table to the factory floor.  Presenting a programme of work that combines art, manufacturing, making and communities, commissioning international and national artists to create world class works, a year round programme and a participatory free family festival for all to enjoy.

Workshops and talks:
Free and low cost workshops are guaranteed to get everyone making.  Past festival workshops include everything from traditional Asian wedding crafts to welding, leather-working to hand-embroidery, ancient mould-making to screen-printing your own retro packaging and everything inbetween.

Live music and performance: 
​​​​​The streets of Blackburn are filled with a diverse offer of performances from local, national and international artists.  Having hosted in the past Spain’s acclaimed Vaiven Circo Danza, who performed their construction-meets-circus show Do Not Disturb.  The UK’s first all female Dhol team, Eternal Taal, brought their team of drummers and dancers to the festival stage.  Music producers turned locally-captured manufacturing sounds into new pieces of music during live studio sessions developed by Ash Murphy and More Music.  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, there's always excitment about who to see and hear next.

Art in manufacturing:
Art in Manufacturing is a commissioning programme at the heart of the festival.  Placing the tools, materials and expertise of a diverse range of manufacturing companies into the hands of national and international artists.  A series of residencies evolve on the factory floor.  These result in ambitious new works of art in formats as diverse as sculpture to choreography and digital to site specific installations.