Meet our Staff - Cat Murray
“I really do love Keighley. Everybody that I encounter is always so up for something
or always so willing to help and support wherever they can.”
Tuesday, 20 January 2026
Author: Interview by Bob Smith
Keighley Creative’s events and operations manager Cat Murray joined the organisation in May 2022 as festival and events co-ordinator, and has progressed to her current position, becoming a key member of the staff.
Cat is from South Derbyshire and studied drama at Liverpool Hope University. After graduating, she returned home, working in hospitality for a short while, before moving to Manchester when she was appointed to the Liverpool Hope Graduate Theatre Company.
The post involved working with people living with dementia in nursing homes, with school children and even in prison. The Covid pandemic lockdown put paid to the project’s continuation. After lockdown ended she worked as a mental health key worker in Sheffield with a housing association before joining Keighley Creative.
“I was very green and didn't have much experience and through working with Madeleine [O’Reilly, arts and festival director] and Gemma [Hobbs, creative director] at the time, gained more experience during the festival and in understanding how to put larger scale events on, how to run several things alongside each other and how to work with artists.”
She then took up the post of events producer for a time, then events manager. “I was given more responsibility over managing and leading on events as the key named person. “And we had a little period where I had to keep the charity going for a couple of months until we recruited the new team that we have now.”
Over the last three years she has gradually taken on extra responsibilities since joining in what she describes as ‘an entry level position’. Part of her current role as events and operations manager is overseeing the hiring of the charity’s venue, encouraging more use of its spaces and the exhibition programme.
The high point of her time with the charity was working with studio holder Leonie Briggs to produce the Rombald’s Rocks sculpture trail as part of the 2025 City of Culture Creative Communities funding. (Find out more at: How Rombald’s Rocks began?)
“It was really great to be part of the process of bringing it to life, but it was also an enormous learning curve for me in my career development, to be able to bring something of that scale to the town and to be able to use all of my experience. It was three years when we launched Rombald's Rocks that I'd been at Keighley Creative, so I was able to bring all of my learning to that event. I think that's definitely a highlight. “I really do love Keighley. Everybody that I encounter is always so up for something or always so willing to help and support wherever they can.”
From her original goal of working in theatre, she has adapted to her creative role at the Keighley charity. Cat said: “I think this role has shown me that things can go on completely different paths.
“You know, I wanted to be an actor and director. That was my dream and love. And there's still part of me that wants to explore that, for myself. But I think this role in particular has shown me that there is so much more to the arts than meets the eye and there is so much more to be done and so much to support artists. And that's something that I found a real love for through this role is I love supporting artists to do what they want to do and be able to make their dreams and their ambitions come to fruition. So that's something that I would like to definitely continue doing, to keep building that community of artists and showing artists that they are able to do what they want to do.”
If Cat’s time with Keighley Creative has been good for the organisation, her experience with the charity has also been good for her.
“It's a great place to work because everybody loves and cares about what they do, and I think that makes a workplace, really, when everybody has a similar mind - Because of Keighley Creative and because of the things that I've been able to do and been able to learn, I feel that my career development's probably progressed much faster than most people. And in terms of the team that we have now, there's a real appetite to learn from each other, and I've learned so much from having a team around me."
“Although I joined in 2022 and it had been a charity for two years, I feel like I've been part of its establishment and getting things in place to be the charity that it wants to be and the charity that it is, and it's been really fascinating for me to be a part of those processes to find out how that works.”
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