One-day Derbyshire festival will mark the creativity of women in a setting of cultural relevance
This summer, the National Trust’s Hardwick Hall will become the setting for a major new celebration of women’s creativity, identity and making, as the Derbyshire Makes – Women Who Make Festival brings together artists, makers, heritage craftspeople, performers and communities from across Derbyshire and beyond.
Taking place in the lead-up to the 500-year anniversary of the birth of Bess of Hardwick, one of the most influential women of the Elizabethan age, the one day free creative festival – taking place on Saturday 30th May 2026 – reimagines Hardwick Hall as a living space for conversation, creativity and collective making.
Hardwick Hall – ©National Trust Images/ Steve Sayers
The festival has been curated by Local in partnership with the National Trust, part of Derbyshire Makes – a 3-year cultural programme led by Derbyshire County Council. The event is free for all visitors, with no National Trust Membership card required.
Festival village
Visitors will encounter a vibrant “festival village”, with workshops, talks, live demonstrations, installations, poetry, heritage walks, food and family activities, alongside a marketplace showcasing women-led creative businesses and contemporary crafts.
At the heart of the programme is a large-scale community sewing bee, Dare to Dream, inviting visitors to contribute personal stories and reflections through textiles in a collective act of making inspired by Hardwick’s globally significant textile collections.
Claire Tymon, Local’s Creative Director, who has co-curated the festival with Hardwick Hall, said: “Women Who Make is about visibility – celebrating women’s creativity not as something hidden away, but as something powerful, skilled, ambitious and culturally important. Hardwick Hall feels like the perfect place for that conversation because Bess herself used making, design and architecture to shape her own legacy in a world that rarely gave women public power.”
Elle Maxwell-Wood, Senior Visitor Experience Officer, said: “Hardwick has always been a place shaped by creativity and ambition, so it feels fitting to host Women Who Make right here where Bess of Hardwick began her incredible legacy. Our collaboration reflects our commitment to making heritage accessible to all and we’re proud to support this free event and welcome people from across the local community to take part and be inspired by women’s creativity, past and present.”
Pop-up poetry, workshops and heritage crafts
The programme also includes live spinning demonstrations from heritage craft specialist Diane Fisher, highlighting endangered textile skills; natural dye walks and workshops led by Abigail Wastie exploring the relationship between landscape and craft; and Threads of Identity, an in-conversation examining textiles and portraiture as a language of memory, identity and expression.
Elsewhere, visitors can experience The Blackwell Brides installation by Platform Thirty1, pop-up poetry performances responding to the site and its histories, and heritage walks tracing Bess of Hardwick’s architectural vision and influence.
Talks and workshops focused on textile conservation and women working in heritage sectors will offer behind-the-scenes insight into creative and often overlooked careers connected to preserving cultural history.
Designed to be open, welcoming and multi-generational, the festival will also feature free activities before the pay barrier, street food, informal gathering spaces, garden games and hands-on making opportunities for all ages.
Women who Make
The wider Women Who Make programme is a bold, welcoming space within Derbyshire Makes that champions women’s creativity, labour and lived experience – past, present and future. Launched on International Women’s Day 2025, the programme brings together artists, makers, designers and activists who identify as women to share skills, stories and solidarity.
Through talks, guided walks, studio visits, workshops and collective making, Women Who Make explores themes of value, care, courage, circular futures, enterprise and belonging. Rooted in Derbyshire’s landscapes, heritage and creative networks, and connected to wider feminist, environmental and cultural movements, the programme creates space for reflection, learning and collective action. Above all, Women Who Make is about visibility, connection and creative agency, supporting women to be seen, heard and celebrated.
The programme is curated by Sophie Gresswell, Samantha Whelan and Stephanie Walsh with Creative Director, Claire Tymon.
Credit – Richard Tymon
Bess of Hardwick – unlocking the legacy of an early feminist icon
Inspired by Bess’s extraordinary legacy as a builder, textile patron and self-made woman, the programme explores what it means for women to create, lead and leave a mark, both then and now.
Born Elizabeth Hardwick around 1527, Bess was one of the richest and most influential women in Tudor England. She started from relatively modest gentry origins and, through four strategic marriages, sharp financial management and political skill, became a major landowner and court figure under Elizabeth I.
She’s most famous for building the spectacular Hardwick Hall, known for its huge windows and the phrase “more glass than wall.” The house itself became a symbol of female ambition and self-made status in a period when women had very limited power.
Women Who Make places contemporary women’s voices in dialogue with Hardwick Hall’s historic collections and stories, asking urgent questions about creativity, labour, visibility and authorship across generations.
Five hundred years after the legendary Bess of Hardwick built her legacy – and her initials – into the walls of Hardwick Hall, Women Who Make invites a new generation of women to do the same.
