Bath Festivals Trust runs a year round participation programme involving two main projects, Creative Factory and Babel, which aim to offer quality arts experience to young people. Both projects are fully inclusive and participation by groups who traditionally have less access to the arts is actively encouraged.

Creative Factory, the youth music project, is now well established and has become a model of best practice for this new style of ensemble. The participants create and perform their own music in a professional context and have input into the running of the project. Despite there being no entry requirements, the standard of music is consistently high and the working methods have proved very positive in terms of improving skills and confidence.

The Babel project, which explores communication – primarily through words – is restarting after a funding break. In the first phase, some particularly successful work was done with disabled children and with young offenders. In this phase the project hopes to offer filmmaking and radio production opportunities as well as writing master classes and poetry slams.