Derbyshire Makes Festival 2026
A free festival across Derbyshire, celebrating making in all its forms.
April to May 2026
Following the huge success of the first event in spring 2025, we’re thrilled to announce that Derbyshire Makes Festival is back this spring - bigger, bolder, and bursting with even more opportunities to get creative.
Throughout April and May, the festival unfolds across the county, from town centres to heritage sites, transforming them into lively spaces of hands-on-making, creative experiences and more.
At the heart of this celebration are six vibrant hub festival days, each one shaped by the character, history and stories unique to that place.
Festival hub dates and locations:
Cromford - Saturday 11th April
Chesterfield - Saturday 18th April
Swadlincote - Saturday 25th April
Heanor - Saturday 2nd May
Glossop - Saturday 9th May
Bolsover - Saturday 16th May
The detailed programme will be released on 24 March 2026. You can look forward to hands-on making, talks, creative walks, exhibitions, performances, music, food, and plenty more.
2026 Festival highlights
Festival Hub Showcase Performances
Enjoy four artistic performances across the Festival, showcased at each of the Festival hub locations. These include:
Parade – The Giant Wheel is a spectacular moving performance featuring a 12-foot Giant Wheel powered by dance artists, travelling through the streets with live music and a community cast of local performers. Created by Autin Dance Theatre, an award-winning touring company known for bold, visually striking performances blending storytelling, physical theatre and large-scale design.
Thingamabob Show is a joyful solo street show built around an ingenious handcrafted, self-exploding contraption - blending circus, clowning and mechanical mayhem, the show celebrates invention and comic timing as a chain reaction of playful engineering unfolds. Created and performed by Matt Pang, a performer, maker and DIY engineer who has been touring inventive circus-inspired shows around the world since 2005.
MakeLAND invites you to step inside a virtual world where Derbyshire’s makers and the landscapes that shape them come vividly to life. This immersive VR (Virtual Reality) experience explores the imagination, skill and deep connection that defines creativity across the county. Created by artist John Whall, whose work brings people together through immersive interactive digital experiences, where you don’t just watch, but explore and co-create.
Val and Friends Community Living Room welcomes you to a home-from-home experience for brews, bants and a dose of good neighbourly vibes. Created by Maison Foo, in collaboration with Make/Shift and Listening Shelf Audio. Maison Foo are a Derbyshire-based theatre company who make theatre, and community experiences that bring people together through creativity.
2025 Festival highlights
Derbyshire Makes Festival unfolded across six local Hubs over five weeks from Friday 28 March to Sunday 27 April 2025. In Chesterfield, Heanor, Cromford, Glossop, Bolsover and Swadlincote, there were artist talks, craft-based demonstrations and making opportunities, as well as exhibitions, performances and more.
Glossop’s central square was transformed into a giant playground, Heanor encouraged neighbours to share their knowledge in the Big Community Skills Swap in Heanor. Each Hub location was programmed by local cultural partners, with activities informed by the stories and history unique to the area. And threading its way between these locations was the mobile workshop and gallery The Makory.
