● Programs
Living Culture & Narratives
Living Culture & Narratives is about nurturing the cultural life of a place, its stories, creative practices, shared memory, and ways of making meaning together.
We work with communities to surface local knowledge, overlooked histories, and everyday acts of care, using creative and participatory approaches to strengthen identity, belonging, and agency. This work helps people reconnect with their place and imagine new possibilities rooted in who they already are.
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Culture shapes how people see themselves, their place, and what feels possible.
In many places, local stories have been eroded, sidelined, or replaced by narratives that frame communities as lacking or left behind. When culture is weakened, confidence falls, participation shrinks, and change feels like something that happens to people rather than with them.
By investing in culture and narrative, this work helps rebuild pride of place, strengthen connection across generations, and create the shared language needed for collective action.
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We treat culture as living infrastructure, not decoration.
Our approach includes: working with local stories, heritage, and creative practice, designing participatory and trauma-aware processes, supporting people to become storytellers and culture-holders, creating spaces where imagination and care can grow together, connecting cultural work to wider place-based change
This work is slow, relational, and rooted in respect for people’s lived experience.
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We work with communities, organisations, and funders who want to place culture, story, and creativity at the heart of place-based change.
If you’re: looking to reconnect people with their place and history, supporting a community through transition or loss, exploring how culture can build confidence and agency, seeking a careful, participatory approach to storytelling we’d love to explore whether working together could be useful.
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When culture is held and resourced over time, it becomes a powerful force for positive change.
Looking ahead, we can imagine places where heritage is not frozen in the past, but actively informs future choices; where creativity is woven into everyday civic life; and where people feel able to shape the story of their place together.
This kind of cultural confidence strengthens everything else, from democratic participation to care for land, buildings, and one another.
● Spotlight
Storying Stalbridge
What is Storying Stalbridge?
Storying Stalbridge is a place-based storytelling and heritage project we developed with The Gugg and local residents.
It was created during a moment of loss and transition, when the town’s long-standing community hub lost its home, and people were asking difficult questions about what kind of place Stalbridge wanted to become.
Rather than starting with plans or proposals, we began with stories.
What we did
Working alongside local people, we:
created shared timelines that traced Stalbridge’s social, cultural, and creative history
invited residents to add their own memories, moments, and lived experiences
hosted story-based workshops and informal conversations
trained local residents as trauma-aware, safeguarding-informed story gatherers
supported the creation of tangible cultural outputs, including a zine and public events
The work was designed to be accessible, careful, and grounded in everyday life.