Pig Walk creators Urban Wilderness CIC become Wild Edge Arts

The team’s much-loved events will continue under the Wild Edge Arts name.

A Stoke-on-Trent arts organisation behind joyful community events such as the Pig Walk is unveiling a new identity as it embarks on its next chapter.

From August, Longton-based Urban Wilderness CIC will become Wild Edge Arts – a new name and brand developed with key partners, community groups and members of the organisation’s Art Club, Teen Squad and creative volunteers.

The rebrand reflects the organisation’s evolution from creating small-scale artistic interventions across the city to becoming a long-term community organisation rooted in Longton, where it now delivers large public events, year-round creative activities and an ambitious heritage building project.

The team’s much-loved events, including the Pig Walk and Winter Gathering, will continue under the Wild Edge Arts name.

Isla Telford and Jenny Harper (credit Wild Edge Arts)

The rebrand has been supported through part of a grant from Arts Council England, which is also funding wider organisational development and activities.

As part of the funded project, the team – who are finalists in the High Street Impact category at this year’s University of Staffordshire Business Awards – will publish a practical guide sharing its experience of community-led rebranding and organisational development to support other small-scale arts organisations.

Co-director Jenny Harper said: “We really wanted to keep the feel of the Urban Wilderness CIC name while developing a new identity alongside our community members which reflects our core values and our evolving work.

“Our creative volunteers usually make things with us for a specific purpose, such as costumes for the Pig Walk or the Winter Gathering, and this was a very different type of project which they fully embraced.

“They know us very well and they had some great insights into what we do which we have been able to incorporate into our new brand.”

The rebrand comes as the team prepares to transform the former Barclays Bank building in Longton into a permanent creative and community hub.

Wild Edge Arts has taken on a five-year lease of the vacant landmark building on The Strand and plans to relocate activities including film clubs, creative workshops, talks, photography classes and wellbeing groups from its current base in Longton Exchange shopping precinct.

The three-storey building will undergo extensive improvements before opening in phases, with longer-term ambitions including artists’ studios, meeting rooms, a small performance space and a café bar.

Co-director Isla Telford said: “Our practice has changed since we began in 2018. We originally dropped into locations across the city, made short-term interventions and left, but now we are deeply embedded in the Longton community, creating large-scale events with 150 volunteers and renovating a heritage building.

“As Urban Wilderness CIC we saw ourselves as instigators. We still see ourselves as pushing and making change happen but now our role in the community and our civic responsibility is more about collaboration.

“We feel very strongly that the work that we make benefits the people who participate in it and the place where it happens. We want to spread optimism through the whole town.”