Sponsorship & Partnership

We couldn’t make the National Festival of Making happen without the kind support of our sponsors, supporters and partners.

Get Involved

By becoming a strategic partner, a collaborator or a festival sponsor, you can connect to our audiences through:

  • Brand Awareness: place your brand across the festival, from logo placement on digital and physical marketing materials, to branded public realm activation and ambient brand presence across the festival site.
  • Programme Collaboration: work with us to sponsor a festival zone or activity strand, focusing your brand on specific audiences and programme areas.
  • Strategic Alignment & Advocacy: align your business with an ethical, sustainable arts organisation with community at its heart.
  • Bespoke Partnerships: we can work with you to develop a partnership that works for your organisation – whether you have a product or service you think our audiences will love, a public sector project that fits our audiences and programme, or a proposal for a workshop, talk, exhibition or screening.

Our Audience

As a free entry festival with an ever-changing and wide-ranging programme, our audiences are varied and diverse. Here’s a snapshot of our audience profile:

  • More than double the UK NPO* average of our audiences work in routine, semi-routine and manual employment. The event is accessible to audiences who do not traditionally engage with cultural programmes.
  • Our largest audience segment are modern professionals, a demographic that has strong reach across the culture sector, indicating broad appeal to culture seekers.
  • Most people attend with friends and family – The National Festival of Making is an accessible and varied event for local communities.
  • Over half of our visitors are from the Blackburn area and demographics are in line with UK census data – the festival is popular with local people.
  • Almost half of our visitors are from outside Blackburn – the festival is a cultural tourism destination for families and culture seekers from across the region and further afield.

*Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation

Promoting Arts and Innovation in Lancashire to the World: Be Part of It

Each year, the National Festival of Making attracts local, national and international media attention, promoting Blackburn and Lancashire to new audiences as a dynamic region with thriving industries, nationally significant landmark arts and culture programmes, and a highly engaged local population. Your organisation can be part of this story and help shape the narrative at the intersection of arts and industry in Lancashire, to regional, national and global audiences.

The National Festival of Making has recently been profiled in publications including BBC Radio 4 Front Row and World at One, BBC News, BBC Breakfast, The Times, The Guardian, The West Australian, Colossal, Creative Boom, Aesthetica, and more.

Current and Recent Partners

National Festival of Making is part of the fabric of Blackburn; it is much more than a weekend of art, making and entertainment, it is core to the development of our place-making, town centre development, cultural strategy, community cohesion and gives residents a real sense of pride in the place they call home.

Martin Eden, Former Director of Place BwD Council

For those curious about what happens when artists roll up their sleeves and step into the engine rooms of British industry, it’s not one to miss.

Creative Boom