11 pics of the Preston MET 2026 taking shape just days away from its opening

The MET – the UK's only fully mobile, modular arts centre – is returning to Larches and Savick this Summer.

Between Saturday, July 18 and Saturday, August 15 an exciting programme of 45 free and affordable events will take place at St Bernard's Community Hub.

Just days before the big opening, we headed down to St Bernard’s to see how construction of the MET was going.

Whilst we there, one the Preston MET’s main organisers, Charles Quick, Emeritus Professor in public art practice at In Certain Places, explained thevision behind the project.

Charles said: “This project really comes out of 20 years' work of all the different projects we've done in the city. You could describe them as cultural intervention projects- bringing culture to different communities through building architecture, as well as programming it with the community. This is the most ambitious and large scale of all of those, and it started in 2020 in a conversation during lockdown when the council had access to some government funding just for culture.

“The whole concept here was about taking the MET... to different communities on the periphery of Preston that don't have easy access to culture and then working with those communities, to co-produce a program that fills this space for a month. It's about putting on the things that the community want to see. It's not about bringing culture and giving it to the community; it's about amplifying what's already here. There's fantastic talent in a lot of communities and this is no different. We've got the opening ceremony on Friday and we officially start on the Sunday. So, we've got Mamma Mania, which is fully booked already and then we've got the close down party on August 15 and that's going to be run by the Sounds Out group that run from our community centre.”

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Community MET Facilitator Emma Caffrey admitted the countdown has finally started to feel real.

She said: “I'm really excited, but I'm really nervous at the same time. I've been working on the program since April, so I was kind of ‘yeah, yeah’... even when Charles was saying like ‘Oh, this is being delivered. That's being delivered’, it never phased me and then one of the members of the community that walks past shouted over to me ‘Oh, it's not long now, is it?’ And I was like, ‘No, it's really not. It really isn't long’ and the nerves have kicked in.”

Teasing what to expect, Emma added: “We've got more this year for the children becuase from the feedback that we got last year, there wasn't a lot for the children, and we're later into the six weeks' holiday. Obviously, parents have got a lot to put up with through the six weeks so, we've done a lot more for the children. We've still got the history talks. We've got the wrestling. We've got a big arts and crafts fair which we're going to be doing in the MET tent and also in the community centre, so that's going to be quite big for people to come and have a look around.”

You can find out more what to expect from the MET 2026 in our main story here.

In the meantime, take a look through the gallery below to see the MET taking shape.