Over the last couple of months, I’ve found myself leaving more events around Mansfield with a genuine sense that something positive is happening here.
Not because somebody’s trying to sell the town to me, but because I’ve been out there experiencing these things for myself. You can feel when something begins shifting in a place. There’s a different atmosphere to it. More people staying out a little longer. More conversations happening naturally. More willingness from people to put something of themselves into the town again.
I noticed it recently at Handley Arcade during the independent businesses event there. The place already has character, but that day especially there was a real sense of people engaging properly with what was around them. Independent traders speaking passionately about what they do. Visitors taking genuine interest rather than simply passing through. It reminded me how important places like that are to Mansfield because they still feel personal. Nothing about it felt manufactured or corporate. It felt local in the best sense of the word.
I experienced something similar attending one of the Mansfield Town Film Festival Reel Futures events at West Notts College. What Jay Martin and the wider team are building through the festival feels genuinely important, particularly now the festival has received BIFA qualifying status.
What stayed with me most though was the pathway it is helping create for younger people interested in film and the creative industries. Sitting there, you could see that connection beginning to form between possibility and opportunity. For working-class young people especially, that matters.
Creative industries still often feel difficult to access if you come from towns like ours. Working-class voices are regularly underrepresented within film and the arts despite the fact they carry some of the most honest and important stories. That is one of the reasons I have so much respect for what Jay Martin is doing through the festival. It is not simply about screening films. It is about opening doors that many people otherwise might never imagine were open to them in the first place.
That feeling carried into BuskFest in the town centre as well. Standing there amongst families, musicians and people gathered around listening in the afternoon sun, the town felt genuinely alive. There was no sense of people rushing through the centre just to get somewhere else. People stayed, listened, talked, and enjoyed the atmosphere together.
Wes Dolan deserves enormous credit for that. Most people around Mansfield know Wes or have heard him play somewhere over the years, and the event reflected that same approachable spirit about him. Credit should also go to Mansfield BID for supporting something that brought real warmth and energy into the centre of town.
More recently, I’ve also had the privilege of spending time involved with the Writing on the Wall project through the Mansfield Townscape Heritage Project, attending workshops and helping judge some of the submissions. The amount of talent coming through has honestly been striking. You sit listening to people read their work and quickly realise how many thoughtful, creative voices exist quietly around this town without always being recognised.
What I particularly love about the project is the permanence of it. The idea that somebody’s words may become physically part of the Old Town Hall itself feels meaningful. For many people, it may be the first time they have felt their voice truly belongs within the fabric of the town.
That is probably what I keep noticing most lately across all these different events and projects. People are contributing again. Creating things. Organising things. Supporting one another’s ideas. Bringing energy back into shared spaces instead of waiting for somebody else to do it for them.
Mansfield still faces challenges, of course it does, but culture matters in a town. Atmosphere matters. The feeling people carry about the place they live matters too.
And lately, from what I’ve been seeing for myself, there are a lot of people across Mansfield working hard to make sure that feeling becomes a more hopeful one.
#WeAreMansfield