Wakefield District Council engaged Maria to gather responses to their  Expression of Interest submitted to the UK City of Culture 2025, and to develop an overarching programme framework to support resource allocation for a District-wide Year of Culture in 2024.

Maria worked with the cultural, creative, voluntary, community, leisure, sporting and business sectors, professional networks and wider Council services.

The first community gatherings were convened across the District and hosted by Maria, to enable conversations to begin about ideas for the Year of Culture.

Initial plans included themes and a commissioning framework, signature events, strands of programme and engagement activities, outcomes, timelines, headline budgets, recommendations on fundraising and on marketing.

Julie Russell, Service Director: Arts, Culture and Leisure, Wakefield Council

“We would absolutely recommend working with Maria, particularly if you are seeking an individual who can lift, push and encourage bigger, bolder thoughts and ideas. Maria is an expert listener and was able to pull together many, many threads into a cohesive, compelling and creative whole. Her enthusiasm is infectious and she quietly and supportively makes things happen. Our programme and future planning have greatly benefited from our time with Maria and we received all round positive feedback from all, at any level, who engaged with her.

We were delighted to work with Maria to scope and devise the core of our Year of Culture 2024 through extensive engagement in Wakefield district. We put out an open call for a Creative Programme Consultant and Maria stood out in a busy field. We were drawn to working with Maria due to her exceptional track record of helping cities and places really raise the bar in terms of creative ambition for their residents. We needed this thoughtful, experienced and creative approach to push forward what we and our partners felt is possible during the year. Maria supported our work at a critical time; we had not been shortlisted for City of Culture 2025, but there was huge excitement and passion to continue with planning our own year celebration in 2024.

We needed specific expertise to act as a neutral broker in some ways, and to harness, galvanise and analyse this energy within the creative, cultural and community sector of our district. We benefitted greatly from Maria’s measured and collaborative approach at this time.

We already have a strong and vibrant cultural landscape in the district and engaging Maria helped us to reflect on what we had, whilst also indicate the scale of our own ambitions for Year of Culture to our varied and diverse partners. We benefited greatly from Maria’s guidance in how to design consultation that engaged a wide range of potential stakeholders, and she brought a freshness to conversations about the future of Wakefield’s culture that were vital. We knew the eventual ambition needed to truly reflect a multitude of voices, and therefore truly be a partnership approach.

Her support and guidance in terms of communities with the steer to create intersectional community gatherings has not only ensured residents voices are embedded within our current plans but has also strongly influenced our long-term approach to engagement.

Maria’s work culminated in a substantial written report which we can now confidently use as a key element of Year of Culture 2024, providing a robust backbone of wide engagement and impressive critical analysis. This report reflected upon the outcomes of many engagement sessions, over 80 in total, reaching a combination of creatives and wider community representatives and residents (200 plus). This included detailed project ideas that have emerged from her time in Wakefield, guidance on our journey and timelines towards a Year of Culture as well as specific insight such as advise on branding/marketing and external funding ideas, including commercial sponsorship.

Beyond this Maria’s work has left a legacy of excitement and attitudinal shift towards a collective vision for Year of Culture. Most delightfully when presenting back the core programme-elements to anyone who has engaged in the earlier consultation, we consistently received feedback that partners, stakeholders and colleagues can see their ideas embedded within our Year of Culture 2024. We could not have fairly and suitably ‘landed’ this without a neutral broker and facilitator, who was comfortable in all settings from political engagement, sector engagement and community engagement.

I was also very pleased to see a senior consultant, be very happy, willing and supportive to work directly with my team; never wanting to chase me personally (for my title!) but working with those who truly matter and will be a needed engine behind ‘getting the job done’.

We will always be keen and willing to consider Maria’s skills in future work we might have.”