Artist Development Prog 2026
Find out more about our YPIP funded programme
Here’s an excerpt from the December 2025 Yorkshire Policy Innovation Partnership (YPIP) Newsletter about the Communities Innovating Yorkshire (CIY) Funded project:
darts is Doncaster’s award-winning creative health and learning charity. We make high-quality, inclusive, creative experiences across the city. Our mission is for everyone to feel an accepted and valued part of the community, creating a healthier and more connected society.
Maya Productions makes diverse theatre, arts and heritage projects, bringing together organisations and individuals who passionately want their work to enable racial justice and social change. We make and tour theatre led by global majority artists, and engage with young people and underrepresented communities through participatory arts. We promote workforce inclusion in the creative sector through training, research and mentoring.
What previous work led to your interest in the CIY Fund, and the creation of your project idea?
darts has supported and trained emerging artists in different forms over the last 35 years, most recently with our Expanding Horizons traineeships programme. It’s vital for us to skill up and prepare future participatory artists and support our local creative economy. We have been working over the years towards a more diverse workforce, and know that this will not happen without trainee and work opportunities. Maya Productions worked on an artist development programme in South Yorkshire from 2023-2025 specifically for artists from global majority backgrounds working in arts and mental health settings, with artist training provided by darts. We recognised our common goal of improving pathways into the cultural and creative industries for under-represented artists and that the CIY fund could help us respond together to the gap in opportunity for global majority artists to break into the industry.
What are you most excited about for delivering your CIY Fund project?
Working in partnership brings new insight and energy to each organisation and provides a unique opportunity for emerging artists in South Yorkshire. We have identified that by combining our areas of expertise we provide a valuable traineeship programme, with representation and sector expertise from artists and mentors from global majority backgrounds, and access to a wide range of creative health and learning opportunities across Doncaster.
We’re excited to be working with artist and researcher Thahmina Begum, who will facilitate conversations with the trainees to understand the challenges that might arise when working with a diverse range of participants and communities. This learning will be fed into Race and Allyship training delivered by Maya Productions to darts staff and artists focusing on what we can do to actively support and advocate for artists from a global majority background.
We’re excited to see how this approach works – the combination of shadowing Creative Health work, working with industry mentors to develop trainees practice and the honest conversations about the experiences of being a global majority artist
We are excited at the prospect that this opportunity will lead to real change in the local creative sector, creating paid opportunities for development, and a broader understanding of race and allyship in South Yorkshire’s cultural infrastructure.
We will use our existing connections with Sheffield Hallam University and South Yorkshire networks, including SYCCIN, South Yorkshire Creative Health Board, Sheffield Culture Team, Rotherham Council and the Culture Health & Wellbeing Alliance in Barnsley to share our learning.
Through discussion and presentations darts will share the learning with the South Yorkshire Creative Health Board which connects to each of the Creative Health Boards in SY (Barnsley, Doncaster, Sheffield and Rotherham.) Workforce development is one of the key strategic ambitions in the new SY CH Enabling Plan which was endorsed by SY Integrated Care Partnership. The learning will then cascade down to the creative organisations that sit on those boards, as well as through Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance (CHWA.) darts are the non-academic lead for the UKRI Mobilising Community Assets programme ‘Creative Health Boards’ working with Sheffield Hallam University and University of Sheffield. We will share what we find from the trainee programme with the research team and the creative assets working with us on the programme.
What other interesting work has your organisation got coming up?
darts continues to play a key role in Doncaster’s Creative Health journey, acting as non-academic lead for the UKRI Funded Creative Health Boards programme. This action research programme is building up a robust body of evidence around the role of lived experience in the Doncaster and South Yorkshire Creative Health Boards, about the barriers to engaging in creative health opportunities, about the needs of those participating in current programmes, as well as providing the opportunity to test new models in response to identified health needs. Our next annual Creative Health programme takes place on 20th May 2026 at The Point in central Doncaster. Our blogs and initial findings can be found at www.creativehealthboards.org.uk
darts was heavily involved in working with Culture Health & Wellbeing Alliance (CHWA) and other members of the SY Creative Health Board to write the SY CH Enabling Plan which can be found here
Maya Productions has relaunched its Race and Allyship training programme, which is now available for organisations to book from January 2026. Our training helps companies build a more inclusive, relevant and safe workspace. To find out more go to our training page HERE.
Inclusion Boost is our online careers toolkit designed to give young people—and anyone curious about the theatre industry—an honest look at what it’s really like to build a career in the arts. Have a look at the toolkit HERE
We are also excited to be sharing, and placing in local archives , the creative work we have generated in our Routes to Roots: A South Asian Heritage Project over the past three years, working in Bradford, Sheffield and Croydon. See HERE for our most recent work.
Get in touch with Cara from darts and Suzanne from Maya Productions to find out more about their organisations and their CIY Fund project.