About Us
IOU Creation Centre for contemporary art, engineering, and technology. Supporting artists to develop, produce, exhibit and tour innovative new work.
IOU Creation Centre aims to spark and empower artists and participants to embrace originality and create innovative art and immersive environments fuelled by imagination and curiosity with a mixed programme of IOU Labs, IOU Art School, and IOU Presents.
Based at Dean Clough Mills in Halifax, the IOU Creation Centre is 10,000 square feet of studio, workshop, and gallery space along with the IOU Hostel, Hebden Bridge, which hosts artists, visitors and audiences.
IOU50 – a two-year programme celebrating IOU’s pioneering legacy in experimental art and performance, while acting as a springboard for the future of the IOU Creation Centre, a place where artists collaborate, experiment and present new work.
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Our Team
Meet our team and board members
Artist and Partners
Meet some of the diverse artists we work and collaborate with
Partners and Funders
Organisations that support our work
Sustainability
IOU Creation Centre is commited to Sustainable practices and actions throughout our operations.
Opportunities
Current opportunities at the IOU Creation Centre and the IOU Hostel, Hebden Bridge
For nearly five decades, under the visionary guidance of Artistic Director and a founder member David Wheeler, IOU has cultivated a distinctive body of original work characterised by a unique approach and presented in diverse settings across the UK and internationally.
Not content with standing still, the IOU team worked with David to begin the company’s transition to a Creation Centre before his departure in 2023. Now, with an energetic new Team and Board the company is fully focused on supporting artists to develop produce and tour work at the intersection of contemporary art, engineering, technology, and academic enquiry.
The IOU Creation Centre draws inspiration from the rich tapestry of culture, landscape, and industrial history that defines our region, Calderdale, in the South Pennines, West Yorkshire. Our programme is a dynamic response to this heritage and categorised into three strands: IOU Labs, IOU Art School and IOU Presents.
Our Values
We invent new artworks from scratch. We take risks, expand our knowledge, learn from each other and empower others to develop their creative practice. We turn ideas into reality.
We are flexible, able to change direction and adjust what we do to be relevant to our audiences and communities.
We are welcoming and accessible. We aim to ignite curiosity and encourage audiences and collaborators to bring their own experiences to our artworks and to co-create with us.
We will be a company informed by a practical understanding of intersectionality. Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person’s social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. We will position ourselves as welcoming and accessible to all.
We care about the next generation and their futures. We will support young talent without traditional qualifications. We will use art of our time to influence the future.
