About Us

Norden Farm Centre for the Arts is built on the site of an ancient farm on the outskirts of Maidenhead, Berkshire in the South East of England. We are a thriving arts centre, averaging 150 events a season, and open 5 days a week. In 2016-17 we engaged with over 180,000 people.

Our spaces include an art gallery, studio theatre, main auditorium for film and live performance, Café Bar, a Georgian farmhouse and 18th century Long Barn. The award winning architecture links the contemporary with the two listed buildings.

Our Values

We are passionate about what we do, and know that the arts have the power to change lives.

At Norden Farm we believe that everyone should have the chance to experience and participate in high quality, transformative and life enhancing arts events.

Through our education, participation and outreach programme, we provide a range of opportunities for the whole community.

Our schools programme 'Farm Out' sees us working with all the primary and secondary school in the old Borough of Maidenhead.

We deliver a regular programme of classes and activities in for children, young people and adults, produce special projects and support artists and the local creative community to create and present work.

Artistic Programme

The artistic programme is wide ranging and ambitious. We programme to entertain, provoke and delight. Our audience have eclectic tastes and are curious about the world. We love to introduce them to new work and ideas.

Our specialist areas of interest are:

• Contemporary Performance: We have a focus on puppetry. As the home town of the most famous puppet makers in the land - Gerry and Sylvia Anderson of Thunderbirds fame - puppetry and object animation has always been central to our artistic programme. We are a home for artists creating breath taking puppetry work for adults and children.

We produce our own puppetry theatre work which tours nationally. Productions have included: One Snowy Night, Kipper's Snowy Day and Miki.

• Arts and Health: We produce innovative projects including sensory exhibition installations for children with additional needs and SocialArts aimed at developing connectivity and creativity for older people in the Borough.

• Live Music: We are huge fans of, and make sure that our audience have access to, the best live nu folk, Americana, blues, jazz, classical, klezmer, rock and early music. We take our job of developing new audiences for the future of live music, very seriously indeed.

Examples of things we do include are Concertini, live music for families where babies and children are encouraged to crawl, move and dance on stage with the musicians; and The Studio Sessions for emerging singer songwriters.