Wiltshire Creative artistic director Gareth Machin said: “It is a programme that draws upon the strength, quality of the diversity of the offer made by the three legacy organisations.

“Our programme is very much an endorsement and celebration of that past. It is also of course a gateway to the future both in terms of financial sustainability but also in terms of artistic opportunity.”

He added: “We will be an organisation that makes work, we will produce a diverse and eclectic programme of scale and ambition and this ambition can be seen in our first home produced theatre production of the season.”

Wiltshire Creative will produce the regional premiere of a story of “courage, sacrifice and passion” in Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Her Naked Skin - marking the centenary of women’s suffrage in Britain. It will also co-produce the European stage premiere of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d with Wales Millennium Centre.

Other stage highlights include Silence by Nicola Werenowska, a new about three generations of a Polish/British family, and a new production of Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, co-produced with Derby Theatre, the Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch and Les Theatres de la Ville Luxembourg.

Gareth said: “We will not just be placing our producing capacity into theatre work, increasingly as time goes on we will be producing work across the different art forms.”

He said the commissioning of new work will be another “key part” of Wiltshire Creative’s identity, adding: “That is one of the really exciting opportunities of Wiltshire Creative. It is about us bringing the world to Salisbury but also taking what we make here out to the world. Our work can be an ambassador for the city taking the name and spirit of the city out and sharing it more widely.”

“Obviously the merger was driven in the first instance by the need to find a financially sustainable model. The existing model was not sustainable. In some ways this is about preserving the offer. If we hadn’t merged it is unlikely the three strands would have continued. But in terms of what the benefits are we will be able to create a more coherent offer and bring the producing capacity and making resource of the Playhouse into the other art forms so that will feed directly into the festival where I think we will be able to make more work. There is lots of opportunity and hopefully there will be more money to go into the art.”

The new season at Salisbury Arts Centre will start with A Wiltshire Tale - a piece of spoken word and song commissioned by Wiltshire Creative, which features singer-songwriter Nick Harper.

The arts centre will continue to host a full season of National Theatre Live and MET Live screenings, including Ian Mckellen as King Lear, Mark Gaitiss in The Madness of King George III, La Traviata and Carmen.

Visual exhibitions will also be held to complement theatre productions. Our Naked Skin, a collaborative exhibition with Queer-Britain, will run alongside the production of Her Naked Skin at Salisbury Playhouse.

There will also be touring work across the different art forms, including theatre from Hoipolloi and Clean Break, dance from Yorke Dance Company and Ballet Cymru, and music from The Kosmos Ensemble.

Salisbury Playhouse will also host national tours of Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art starring Matthew Kelly and Tom Tom Kempinski’s Duet for One starring Belinda Lang.

Gareth said: “Wiltshire Creative is not just about what happens in our buildings. We want spectacle and magic to spill out of buildings into the street and spaces of Salisbury. This August bank holiday fireworks, music, theatre, circus dance will explode into the city alongside a visual arts trail and an archive exhibition and a family fiesta.”

Lift Off! is a free party for residents and visitors to celebrate the formation of Wiltshire Creative and its first season.

Working with Without Walls, tWiltshire Creative has commissioned a new dance piece from the Rosie Kay Dance Company and circus from Ockham’s Razor, to be performed during the weekend.

Boots on the Ground, from Tangled Feet Theatre, will be an interactive theatre piece marking the 100th anniversary of the armistice, performed in the heart of Salisbury.

The Salisbury Festival Chorus will perform Howard Moody’s opera PUSH, which tells the story of Simon Gronowski, who, as a boy, was pushed by his mother off a train bound for Auschwitz and survived.

The new season also includes Christmas productions. Who Sleighed Santa?, a murder mystery dinner party with a festive twist will be brought to Salisbury Arts Centre and pantomime Beauty and the Beast will be at Salisbury Playhouse as well as the return of musical’s The Night Before Christmas and A Christmas Carol.

Classical composer Jonathan Dove was announced as the guest director for the Salisbury International Arts Festival which returns next year.

He said: “I’m very excited to be working with Salisbury Festival for my 60th Birthday, as our relationship goes back 30 years.

“My earliest published work was written for the 1989 Salisbury Festival, when I was Musician in Residence. I wrote four pieces for the festival that year, and also accompanied a silent film, and it was the beginning of my being a full-time composer. I wrote more music for Salisbury Cathedral in the 1990s, and then an opera, The Walk from the Garden, for the 2012 Salisbury Festival. Next year’s festival will feature some wonderful musicians, and I’m enormously looking forward to all our events.”