The manager of Letchworth Arts Centre got the chance to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace last week to celebrate a fellowship awarded by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.
Maria Iredale was granted a fellowship in 2013 and travelled to the USA to explore the way art can help regenerate a town.
Maria said: “The Queen was small and lovely and the Duke of Edinburgh looks amazing for a man of his age.
“When we had been presented we carried on chatting with other fellows and Prince Michael of Kent came up and we talked about how the arts can transform the fortunes of an area.
“I’ve always firmly believed in the capacity of the arts to boost communities.
“With my fellowship I went to places where they’d made that happen, from Detroit to Boston.”
Through the project, a theatre group from Boston will perform and work with school pupils in Letchworth to put on a project about the First World War as part of the Letchworth Festival in June.
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