Culture Chelmsford

About the work

Culture Chelmsford is an independent charity, set up in 2017 and led by volunteer trustees, working to build the cultural infrastructure of Chelmsford in Essex. It works with artists, schools, theatres, museums, the city council and local creatives to turn ideas into real projects. It commissioned and published the district’s first cultural strategy, helped launch Chelmsford’s Local Cultural Education Partnership, and supports SPARK!, the city’s youth movement of 13 to 25-year-old cultural changemakers.

In 2025 Culture Chelmsford secured £250,000 from Arts Council England’s Place Partnership Fund for its Young Cultural Changemakers Programme, which puts SPARK! in the driving seat of decisions about the city’s cultural future. As part of it, Culture Chelmsford, SPARK! and the Museum of Chelmsford wanted to change who gets a say in what the museum collects next, so its collection reflects the Chelmsford of today, not just its past.

Culture Chelmsford, working with the Museum of Chelmsford, commissioned Always Possible to design that campaign, Collecting Our Future. We worked directly with SPARK! in evening workshops, so the young people shaped the campaign’s message, tone and visuals in their own voice. From there we built the campaign strategy, a messaging playbook, a partner toolkit and a week-by-week campaign calendar. We also designed a light-touch evaluation framework the partners could realistically run themselves.

The campaign ran across the city from January to March 2026. It used playful “are you more into this, or this?” prompts on posters, social media and partner channels to invite residents to suggest objects that represent Chelmsford now. What people shared is feeding into the museum’s new collections policy.