On Friday, Arts Council England announced its investment programme for the next three years. East Lancashire is to benefit from a £9.4million pot being awarded to organisations and projects in the county. Here, in a specially-commissioned piece for the Lancashire Telegraph, Arts Council England chief executive Darren Henley explains how new investment will support a creative future for everyone

Imagination and ambition are at the heart of East Lancashire and can be seen in the annual Pendle Festival of Culture and Blackburn’s vibrant street art.

Creative ambition is what the Arts Council is here to champion. It is our job to invest in arts, museums and libraries to ensure everyone can feel the joy and inspiration of culture.

We have just announced the arts organisations, museums, and libraries across England we will regularly fund over the next three years. In Lancashire that will mean investment of £9,420,774. Ten of the organisations we are supporting are in East Lancashire.

We believe everyone deserves to experience the very best and most ambitious arts and culture, wherever we live and whatever our background or passion. Much of that is free of charge.

Last year we announced we wanted to invest more in Blackburn with Darwen and that it was a priority for us to make this happen. Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley Hyndburn, Pendle and Rossendale are also part of our Levelling Up for Culture pledge.

Many of the organisations in East Lancashire will get regular funding from us for the first time. That includes four in Blackburn.

The Festival of Making highlights the town’s role in the textile industry’s history while celebrating present-day creativity through its exciting free festival and artists’ commissions.

British Textile Biennial, another new addition, is rooted in local cultural and industrial identity and it has the potential to grow to a nationally significant event.

We are supporting Culturapedia to promote cultural events at the heart of communities. And I am delighted to welcome Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery and Rossendale’s Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery to the group of organisations we regularly invest in.

There are also two new organisations in Accrington. Dance Syndrome develops brilliant, inclusive, work with and for disabled people, while Idle Women is an arts, environment and social justice charity.

And we are retaining our commitment to Waterfoot’s inventive Horse and Bamboo theatre, and to Burnley Youth Theatre which celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2023 and which I visited with the new arts minister, Stuart Andrew, and MP Antony Higginbotham just last month.

Through this new investment, we are delivering on the promise of our 10-year strategy, Let’s Create, to build a country transformed by creativity and culture which brings people together to be happier and healthier, building pride in place and in our communities.

But this is not the only way we are supporting that ambition here in East Lancashire.

Through our Creative People and Places programme, we aim to transform access to arts and culture in villages, towns and cities where for whatever reason getting involved in creative and cultural activities is lower than many other areas. One organisation that aims to change that is Super Slow Way which reaches audiences in communities along the Leeds-Liverpool canal from Blackburn to Pendle.

Taking part in creative and cultural activities makes us feel happier, inspired and healthier. It also has a central role in creating a thriving local economy which is recognised in Pendle’s 10-year cultural strategy

As we move forward from the pandemic, we want to nurture and support East Lancashire’s distinctive cultural industry and identity, working with organisations and others here to place creativity at the centre of the recovery and of everyday life. And with the commitment, dedication and talent shown by so many people here, I know we will succeed.