To create a thriving space for young people and the larger community to engage with music, dance, theatre, art and comedy in Chippenham.
Rag and Bone Arts CIC and Riverbank Studios have an opportunity to create a space in the heart of Chippenham that provides dance, theatre, music and art for the whole community. Our town doesn't have the facilities to attract a diverse range of performance work and gigs and we want to change that.
Chippenham has great transport links and it's easy to travel out to find your culture, but we want to encourage it in and celebrate what we have on our doorstep. Without the right venues, we can't have the right influences and can't celebrate our local talent in the right way.
We want to offer the young people of Chippenham the chance to study UAL qualifications in Performing Arts, where currently no such provision exists. We can be their stepping stone to the bigger picture.
The space is also intended to cater for small-scale independent theatre, dance, physical theatre and music events, providing an affordable venue for Chippenham residents, allowing them more exposure to the arts and opening up opportunities for greater collaboration within the town.
Working alongside Riverbank Studios, our partners in the conversion of the space, we will also be pursuing funding applications to all of the local and national funding partners and will continue to fundraise every year to make this vision work. This is alongside thousands of pounds of in-kind support from Artel, the architectural company that owns the building.
We believe that this is project can bring a significant positive contribution to the ongoing vision for Chippenham’s future, producing a venue that provides professional tuition for the under 25s, supports local creative groups and is easily accessible to both residents and visitors, who can experience what brilliant talent is being nurtured here, while having access to more events in their town.
This project successfully funded on 14th December 2023