With For About 2026: Are you playing out?

With For About (WFA) 2026 is for practitioners who make art with young people - including artists, youth workers, play workers, teachers, producers, and funders.

As always, this will be a reflective, practice-based space. We’ll explore questions together, experiment with ways of working, and share learning as it unfolds - an assemblage of people, poetry and play.

Bring your curiosity, your questions, and your sense of wonder.

More information announcing contributors and session details coming soon!

With For About 2026 is designed as a day for shared thinking, reflection and participation.

Expect:

• A welcoming, practice-based space for experimentation and shared learning
• Time to explore collaboration, creative methods and questions around working with young people under 25
• A small, intimate gathering that encourages creative forms of participation
• Sessions led by freelance artists and practitioners
• A mix of playful activities, workshops, panels and discussions
• Opportunities to reflect together on process, community and creative practice
  

Host and curator: Sarah Bailey - artist, educator and strategist

Further invited guests and contributors will be announced soon!

We are offering a tiered ticketing system, along with concessions and bursaries.

If you are applying for a bursary, please contact us before purchasing your ticket.

We are offering a limited number of £50 bursaries for artists, freelancers, independent producers, community practitioners and curators to support attendance of With For About . Bursaries may be used to contribute towards the cost of travel, accommodation, subsistence, childcare and/or access costs.

All artists, freelancers, independent producers and curators are eligible to apply. Priority will be given to those who would otherwise be unable to attend. Those wishing to apply for a bursary to support their attendance should send the following information by email to [email protected], marking their query 'WFA / Bursary':

• Amount applied for in £
• Brief explanation (250 words max) of how the bursary will support your attendance
• Breakdown of cost

Further details, including guest announcements and reading lists along with access information and how we’ll capture the event for those unable to attend will be available very soon.

We aim to create safe, welcoming and accessible spaces for all. Access information for Shakespeare North Playhouse:

• Wheelchair accessible, with flat access
• In a town centre location
• Nearest train station is Prescot (for trains to Liverpool Lime Street and Wigan North Western. Access to all platforms using station lifts, a stepped footbridge is available and the station is fully accessible)
• Nearest accessible parking is at Prescot train station
• Nearest taxi drop off is at Prescot train station

Full address: Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prospero Place, Prescot, L34 3AB

If you'd like to discuss your access needs, please get in touch: info@heartofglass.org.uk, marking your query as 'WFA / Access'.

We live in a time that often looks for quick answers rather than space to question and explore. This can feel especially intense in work with young people, where there is pressure to respond to education, wellbeing and future readiness.

With For About 2026 offers a different approach. This is a space to slow down, reflect, play and experiment. We’re interested in relationships, collaboration and what it really means to work with young people in the moment they are in. Rather than aiming for consensus or neat conclusions, we invite participants to sit with uncertainty and explore the complexity of creative practice together.

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Funded by Arts Council England and Paul Hamlyn Foundation with additional support from Arts Council of Ireland and Create Ireland.

Part of This Place, This Stage, an Arts Council England–supported Place Partnership with Knowsley Council, Heart of Glass, Adlib, Kirkby Gallery, Make CIC and Shakespeare North Playhouse.

With For About is Heart of Glass’s annual gathering, bringing people together to think, talk and reflect on the urgent questions shaping collaborative and socially engaged art – and the role of artists in civil society.

It’s not a showcase, but a shared space for open, generous exchange. A place to reconnect with colleagues, comrades and communities of interest, and to think together about what matters now.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Shakespeare North Playhouse, Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot, United Kingdom

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.

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