Get involved in arts & culture in West Sussex

Do you want to make sure arts and culture in West Sussex has influence in our region?

Creative Crawley and Chichester Festival Theatre are convening monthly meetings across West Sussex to bring creative professionals together, If you live or work in West Sussex in the creative and cultural industries, come along, meet your peers and crucially connect up and find out what’s happening across the region at this crucial time.

Meetings take place alternately in person and online.

Sept 23rd 2026: Unit 79/80 County Mall : Read the text based minutes here: Minutes – West Sussex Creatives meeting 23 Sept 2026 and the visual minutes by Bal Camp here: West Sussex Creatives visual minutes overview by @notbyrobots Bal Camp

October 15th 4pm – 5pm online: book your free place HERE

November, in person,  location and date tbc – please get in touch if you are able to host

December, online, date tbc.

January 2027, in person at Chichester Festival Theatre date tbc

February, online, date tbc

March, in person, location and date tbc – please get in touch if you are able to host

2025/26 activity

In 2025/6 Creative Crawley led a new programme of activity in partnership with Chichester Festival Theatre to ensure creative professionals based in West Sussex  have a say in how arts and culture is represented and championed in the reorganising of local government and devolution.

We invited  all those working in the creative industries in West Sussex from independent artists and creative organisations, to theatres, galleries, visitor attractions, museums, gardens, historic houses and castles to join us in a series of meetings where we invited guest speakers to help us understand the devolution and local government reorganisation process and find a way to represent the breadth and depth of the cultural offer in West Sussex so that it’s placed at the heart of the new thinking about how resources are allocated in the new administration.

You can see the final cultural prospectus here: From West Sussex to the World – a cultural snapshot, spring 2026 (1)

Past meetings:

The first meeting was online on Tues 23rd September 2025.

You can watch a recording of it HERE using this passcode to access the recording: 06a^cH0C

You can read the minutes from the meeting here: Notes from WSCC artists meeting 23 Sept.docx.

You can download the presentation by Davina Christmas from Arts Council England here: west sussex creatives – Sept 25

The second meeting was in person at Chichester Festival Theatre on Monday 20 October 2025

You can read the minutes here:  West Sussex Creatives WORKSHOP notes 20 Oct 2025 Chichester

The third meeting was at the Creative Crawley space at  Unit 79/80 County Mall, Crawley on Weds 19th November 2025 from 3pm – 5pm.

You can read the text minutes here: West Sussex Creatives Meeting 3 – Minutes

You can look at the visual minutes by Balaam Camp (@notbyrobots) here:

The fourth meeting was at the Worthing Pavilion, Atrium,  Marine Parade, Worthing, BN11 3PX on Monday 8th December 2025 from 2pm – 4pm it was also online.

You can read the minutes here: Minutes for West Sussex Creatives Meeting 4

The final meeting took place on Tuesday 24th March 2026 online where we will shared the finished West Sussex Cultural Prospectus.

You can read the minutes here: Minutes for West Sussex Creatives Final Meeting 24 March 2026

Images: Visual minutes of the 19 Nov meeting by @notbyrobots, the beginnings of a map to chart where culture happens in West Sussex created at the second meeting and people at the second meeting in Chichester, Oct 20 2025