 The Centre for Processional Culture will help protect Britain’s rich but increasingly vulnerable processional traditions. There are few art forms quite like procession. Part performance, part ritual, part celebration and part public gathering, processions have the unusual ability to bring art and culture out of traditional venues and directly into the places where people live. They can be ancient or entirely contemporary. They might involve music, theatre, dance, puppetry, costume, sculpture, carnival, ceremony or simply the collective act of moving through a place together. And yet, despite the extraordinary variety and cultural significance of processional practice, there has been relatively little dedicated infrastructure in the UK focused specifically on understanding, developing and supporting it. That is beginning to change. Introducing the Centre for Processional CultureA new Centre for Processional Culture in the UK (CPCUK) is being established in Lancashire, with its base in Waterfoot, Rossendale. The Centre has been founded by Esther Ferry-Kennington, Director of Lancashire Encounter and former Executive Director of Horse + Bamboo Theatre, supported by a partnership between Horse + Bamboo (Rossendale), Preston City Council, and Manchester Met University, with funding from Arts Council England. Its emergence feels particularly appropriate in Lancashire - a county with deep traditions of street performance, festivals, community celebration, heritage and processional activity. The Centre aims to provide a space for people working across these different worlds to come together: artists, makers, producers, festival organisers, heritage practitioners, cultural leaders, researchers and communities. Rather than defining procession narrowly, the ambition is to recognise the breadth of practices that come together under the umbrella of processional culture. That could mean traditional and heritage processions, contemporary street arts, carnival, outdoor performance, ceremonial events, large-scale public spectacles, community celebrations and the artforms that make these experiences possible. But behind the creation of the Centre is a growing concern about the sustainability of these activities - particularly the many events that depend on volunteers and community organisations to survive. A culture under pressure Speaking about why she felt the time was right to establish the Centre, Esther Ferry-Kennington says the conversations she has already had with people working in the sector have revealed widespread concern about its future. “Our network has shared explicit worries about the future of these diverse and accessible cultural activities. Increasing traffic management costs are being passed on to declining groups of volunteers, fundraising has become increasingly onerous, and as local authority capacity has decreased, so too has the appetite - and sometimes the confidence - to manage even well-understood risks. “We are also seeing ageing committee members who are worried that there simply isn’t enough new blood to continue or develop these events. We want the Centre to help change that: to ensure that a new generation of event leaders is initiated, supported and equipped to carry these traditions forward into the future.” That question of succession is an important one. Many processions are not simply events that can be programmed, funded and delivered by an organisation. They are the product of accumulated knowledge: how to organise a route, work with local authorities, manage volunteers, engage communities, commission artists, build spectacular structures, work with emergency services and navigate the practical complexities of putting large numbers of people into public space. When the people who hold that knowledge step away, there is a risk that something much larger than an individual event is lost. Why does processional culture matter?A procession changes the relationship between performer and audience. Instead of asking an audience to enter a theatre, gallery or concert hall, the work moves into public space. The audience may become participants, spectators, followers or even part of the performance itself. The route becomes a stage. The street becomes a venue. The community becomes part of the performance. This creates opportunities that are quite different from those offered by conventional cultural spaces. Processions can transform how people experience familiar places and can bring together people who might not otherwise encounter one another through the arts. They can also carry memory and identity. Many processional traditions have developed over generations, while contemporary artists continue to reinvent the form through new approaches to performance, visual art, music, puppetry, costume, movement and technology. There is therefore a fascinating conversation to be had between heritage and innovation. How do we protect and understand traditional processional cultures while allowing them to evolve? How can artists develop new forms of procession? What kinds of commissioning models could support ambitious processional work? And what infrastructure, skills and knowledge are needed to make processional events sustainable? These are some of the questions that a dedicated Centre could help bring into focus. When the infrastructure becomes the riskThe challenges facing processional events aren’t only about funding. Processions occupy public space, often at scale, and that brings practical challenges around traffic management, public safety, local authority capacity and risk. For a large professional event, these might be logistical problems to solve. For community-led processions, the burden can fall on volunteers who are already dealing with fundraising, administration and increasingly complex regulatory requirements. Recent examples demonstrate just how complex this can become. As Esther explains: “The challenges around safety and traffic management show just how vulnerable processional events can be. The shocking events at Liverpool FC’s Premier League title celebrations in May 2025, when a car was driven into crowds lining the streets, highlighted how even well-resourced processional events can face serious safety challenges. And in November 2024, the long-standing Bridgewater Carnival - one of the biggest and most spectacular illuminated parades of its kind in Europe - experienced cars being left on the parade route when parking couldn’t be found. “These issues are often being dealt with by volunteers, but no event can truly be inclusive unless it is safe for everyone. At the same time, decreasing resources can create a culture of risk aversion within some local authorities, particularly where there may not be the confidence, capacity or experience to deal with the complexities of potentially centuries-old processional traditions. The result is that events can become harder to organise precisely at the moment when they most need support.” The answer to these problems isn’t necessarily to remove risk from public cultural activity. Nor is it simply to expect volunteers to become experts in increasingly complex areas of event management. Instead, there is an argument for sharing knowledge, building relationships and developing a stronger collective voice for processional culture. A Lancashire-based initiative with a wider ambitionAlthough the Centre is based in Lancashire, its remit is much bigger than our county.
Lancashire provides an interesting starting point because of its strong cultural traditions and its history of outdoor and community-based performance. The Centre’s base in Waterfoot also connects its development with a place that has a long history of experimental theatre and community engagement. But the ambition is national: to create connections between practitioners and organisations working across processional culture throughout the UK. The Centre aims to build a network, knowledge base and collective voice for this distinctive area of cultural practice, bringing together experience, sharing knowledge and advocating for the support and resources needed to sustain and develop it. Individual events can be easy to overlook. Collectively, however, they represent a substantial body of cultural activity taking place in towns, cities and communities across the country. Esther describes this as the need to demonstrate a “critical mass of human activity” rather than seeing processions as a collection of isolated events. “By bringing together partnerships and profile, we can start to highlight a critical mass of human activity which is more than just single events. These are not isolated traditions or one-off celebrations; together they represent an important and living part of our cultural life. “We hope that by making that activity more visible, by connecting the people who sustain it and by building partnerships across the sector, we can advocate for the resource and support that processional culture needs. Ultimately, we want to help ensure that these important cultural practices don’t simply disappear because the people and infrastructure that sustain them no longer have the capacity to continue.” The first major gathering: the Processional Culture Symposium The Centre is marking its emergence with a Processional Culture Symposium on 23 September 2026 at Horse + Bamboo in Rossendale. The event will bring together stakeholders, creatives and leaders involved in processional events to explore both the opportunities and challenges facing the field - and to consider where the Centre might be able to offer support. Importantly, this isn’t simply an event about listening to established voices. The Centre is inviting contributions from people with ideas to share about processional events and cultures, both contemporary and heritage. There is an open invitation for short presentations covering subjects such as:
There is also financial support available for people who would like to attend but may find the costs prohibitive. Ten bursaries of £75 are being offered to help support attendance, recognising that for freelancers in particular, taking a day away from paid work, combined with travel and other costs, can make participation in sector events difficult. Expressions of interest for presenting or attending through a bursary are due by midnight on 10 September 2026. A conversation worth joining The establishment of CPCUK raises an interesting question: what happens when a cultural form that has often existed across multiple sectors - theatre, festivals, heritage, carnival, visual arts, community arts and public celebration - gets a dedicated home? Perhaps the most exciting possibility is that it creates connections between people who don’t usually find themselves in the same room. A heritage practitioner might have something to learn from a contemporary street artist. A festival producer might have an idea that could transform how an artist commissions new work. A puppeteer might find common ground with a carnival maker. A community organiser might bring knowledge that an arts institution has overlooked. And artists working in different disciplines might discover that the particular challenges of creating work for streets, routes and public spaces are shared. That cross-pollination could be one of the Centre’s most valuable contributions. From Lancashire to the wider UK There is also something worth celebrating about the Centre’s Lancashire roots. Cultural infrastructure is often imagined as something that flows outward from London or the UK’s major metropolitan centres. CPCUK offers a different model: a national conversation emerging from a place with its own distinctive traditions, expertise and cultural history. Lancashire is not simply the location of the Centre. It is part of the story. The combination of Lancashire’s heritage of community and outdoor cultural activity with Esther Ferry-Kennington’s experience at Lancashire Encounter and Horse + Bamboo provides a strong foundation for thinking about what processional culture can become next. The challenge now is to bring as many voices as possible into that conversation. Artists. Makers. Festival producers. Heritage organisations. Community groups. Researchers. Funders. Commissioners. And, importantly, the people who experience processions as audiences and participants. An invitation to the sectorThe launch of the Centre for Processional Culture is an opportunity to think differently about a form of cultural practice that is all around us, but which can sometimes sit between established categories. What if procession were considered not simply as an event format, but as an artform in its own right? What new work might be commissioned? What traditions might be better supported? What knowledge could be shared? And what might happen if the people who create and sustain processional culture had a dedicated space in which to ask those questions together? The Processional Culture Symposium on 23 September is intended to be the beginning of that conversation. For anyone working in festivals, outdoor arts, theatre, heritage, carnival, community arts, public performance or related fields, it could be an opportunity not only to find out what CPCUK might become, but to help shape it. The Centre for Processional Culture is starting in Lancashire. Its conversation could belong to the whole UK. Find out moreThe CPCUK Processional Culture Symposium takes place on 23 September 2026. View the symposium and book tickets on Eventbrite For enquiries about presenting or applying for one of the attendance bursaries, contact [email protected]. Presentation and bursary deadline: midnight, 10 September 2026. Comments are closed.
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