Happy New Year from Darwen Town Centre! We wish you a fantastic year ahead.
As we welcome in 2025, we also look back upon the year that we’re leaving behind. 2024 was full of free family activities and milestone cultural events, from community art projects to the exclusive adidas Spezial exhibition, Darwen really was the place to be.
Join us in saying a fond farewell to 2024 as we recap on our Darwen Town Centre highlights from the past year…
Free family activities at Darwen Market
We continued our successful collaboration with Culturapedia in 2024 and brought over 30 free children’s activities, workshops and performances to Darwen Market. These activities are made possible by funding from Arts Council England.
From embroidery, clay and calligraphy workshops, to puppet theatre shows, roaming entertainment and much more. These fantastic events not only provide families with inspiring and creative things to do during the school holidays, but they also encourage people into the town centre to support our amazing local retailers and traders.
We find that they are attended by both Darwen based families and those from further afield. It’s great that they encourage people from surrounding areas to see what we have on offer here in Darwen Town Centre.
Keep an eye on the event calendar and Darwen Market’s Facebook page for more free family fun in 2025.
Darwen Monthly Artisan Market
Our good friends at Crafty Vintage brought an abundance of creativity, craftsmanship and good vibes to Darwen Market Square with the return of the artisan market in 2024. The event took place on the last Saturday of every month from March till October.
Crafty Vintage were also behind the excellent Darwen Festival of Fun in July, where Fat Cat Brass had the entire market square boogying despite the summer showers!
The monthly artisan market will not be continuing in 2025, but Crafty Vintage will continue to bring colourful events to Darwen Town Centre in 2025.
DECADE: adidas Spezial exhibition
The ten year anniversary of the iconic adidas Spezial range was celebrated right here in Darwen Town Centre in May 2024.
Gary Aspden, Darwen native and mastermind behind the adidas Spezial range, is passionate about putting Darwen on the map and bringing global events to his hometown.
DECADE was highly successful and had visitors from all over the UK and beyond. The free exhibition of adidas Spezial shoes, clothing and accessories was held at Fourteen Market Street over ten days in May. It included the exclusive launch of the Blackburn SPZL (DECADE pack) X Nightsafe edition shoe, with funds raised for Nightsafe, Blackburn based homelessness charity.
We celebrated Gary’s contribution to Darwen in July, when part of Knott Street near the youth centre was renamed “Gary Aspden Way”.
Darwen Live 2024
The adidas Spezial exhibition coincided with Darwen Live, which took place on the 25th and 26th May. Yet again we were treated to an incredible weekend of free live music from a diverse range of genres.
2024’s headline acts were Tunde (The Lighthouse Family) and Echobelly, who both hit the main stage on Darwen Market Square and provided excellent performances.
We look forward to seeing the line-up for Darwen Live 2025!
Community art projects with Lucie Cooke
We started working with Clitheroe based artist, Lucie Cooke, in 2024 – a collaboration which resulted in several community art projects for Darwen Town Centre.
The #shopdarwen Tower Trail
The first of which was The #shopdarwen Tower Trail, an art trail for our fantastic Shop Darwen retailers. Each participating local business had either a Darwen Tower illustration on their window or on a chalkboard.
Children collected a free worksheet and ticked off each drawing as they found it. This trail ran throughout the summer holidays and was a great simple activity to keep the kids busy while shopping in Darwen Town Centre, or to do alongside free family activities at Darwen Market.
The Big Summer Draw
We also hosted The Big Summer Draw with Lucie at Fourteen Market Street on Saturday 17th August.
This community art event involved inviting passers by to add to a large piece on the windows at Fourteen. The theme of the art was “Feels Like Summer” – what a British summer means to each of us. Naturally, there were plenty of ice creams, sunshines and sandcastles!
With 89 members of the local community making their mark, The Big Summer Draw was a great success.
The autumn window
Following on from this success, we invited local primary schools to join us and Lucie to make an autumn themed window in September, also at Fourteen.
Pupils from Avondale Primary and Ashleigh Primary drew leaves, toadstools and pumpkins and helped us to create an eye catching autumnal design for Darwen Town Centre.
The #shopdarwen Christmas Trail
We also did a #shopdarwen art trail with Lucie over the festive period, where children were invited to find the Christmas decoration illustrations at 31 Shop Darwen retailers.
To go alongside this, Lucie also did a super festive window design at Fourteen. This design was inspired by the work of one very talented pupil at Ashleigh Primary, who won the “design the Christmas window at Fourteen” competition, well done to Jasmine!
Darwen Christmas Lights Switch On 2024
That brings us to the biggest and best event on the Darwen Town Centre 2024 calendar, our Christmas Lights Switch On.
Crafty Vintage pulled out all the stops to bring an incredible day full of quality entertainment, delicious food, excellent shopping and festive vibes to Darwen Market Square. There was roaming entertainment from 10am, main stage entertainment from 2pm, and Festive Markets all day long.
Popular compere, Kiki DeVille, kept the energy up throughout the whole event, which culminated in an electrifying headline performance from 90s house dance group, K-Klass.
The Darwen Christmas lights switch on is a wonderful way to bring our yearly event calendar to a close. It’s an event that just keeps on getting better and better every year!
A year of community, culture and creativity in Darwen Town Centre
That concludes our 2024 round-up, what a brilliant year we had here in Darwen Town Centre, a year full of community, culture and creativity.
We also have to mention several successful Darwen Town Centre events that were not organised by us, including the 9th annual Festival of Brass in June, the first ever Darwen Pride in July, Darwen Rotary Day in September, plus Darwen Rotary’s Santa’s Grotto at Darwen Market and Darwen Art Society’s Winter Exhibition.
Thank you to everyone who supports events and activities in Darwen Town Centre, whether that’s by sharing them on social media, or attending them with your family – your support is always appreciated.
Excited for what’s to come in 2025? So are we!
Follow us on Facebook, sign-up to our email newsletter, and keep an eye on the event calendar to be the first to know about upcoming events in Darwen Town Centre.
