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2022

Every community needs a stage

Every year on Boxing Day the people of Wigan come together, transforming the streets into a stage with a festival of costume and fancy dress. Through this extraordinary collective imagination, a festival of theatre and masquerade is already evolving and demonstrating the will and desire of local people to create a stage of celebration. Performing arts are inherently social arts and provide a necessary opportunity to develop social and communication fire required by a healthy democracy. Cultural activities and the performing arts specifically, can uniquely serve as a meeting place and site for the formation of a shared communal identity. To ignite The Fire Within, it is not enough to present performances, it is necessary to cultivate lively, candid and meaningful participation. Every community needs a space to show their creative expression and to share its diverse stories. Stages, both permanent and temporary, festivals and moments of collective participation bring people together and anchor our community and cultural identity.

In 2022 Wigan will cultivate stages, as well as develop theatre as an art form in our Borough...