High Peak Community Arts

Community Arts in the High Peak

2023 Creative Camp

Our Easter Creative Camp is open now for bookings.

As we are funded by the Holiday Activity & Food fund, we are prioritising bookings from young people in receipt of Free School Meals or with additional needs, so please do book on, but if you don’t meet these criteria we will email you to say you are on a waiting list.

Your booking will be confirmed no later than the first day of the Easter holidays – 3rd April.

Click here to book via Coordinate Sport.  This is a new booking system – if you have any difficulty please email sophie@highpeakarts.org to book direct.

The 4 days of creative activities launch our 2023 season of out-of-school activity for children and young people aged 8+, this year the theme is Under the Ocean.  Ideas produced at Easter will be part of the Summer School in August.

The plan for Easter is:

Day 1 – Tuesday 11th April
High Peak Under the Sea with Gordon MacLellan.
Help us build an immersive underwater world in RR (Real Reality).

Day 2 – Wednesday 12th April
Song writing & Music with Gareth & Lucy

Day 3 – Thursday 13th April
Stories & Characters with Lucy & Benn

Day 4 – Friday 14th April
Recording & filming with Mark & Benn

Time & Location
Sessions are 10.30am – 3pm at Buxton Community School 6th Form block, College Road, SK17 9AE

Food
You can book our healthy packed lunch, or bring your own – part of the booking process.

 

 

 

Pre-order the High Peak ABC here

We are excited to launch our beautiful ABC book made specially for the High Peak by our early years team, Karl Harris, Andrea Joseph and Lucy Jackson.

Launch day has a special treat – celebrated poet, Helen Mort is coming to perform a poetry reading of her own work and lend her support as one of our HPCA ambassadors.
Lucy Jackson with perform the song and get us all singing along, there will be an arts activity for little ones to enjoy, and Andrea Joseph will be signing copies of the book at the sales counter!
 
 
How we made the book:
Our early years team has spent 2022 running workshops with babies and families in messy paint play and music making. Local artist, Andrea Joseph has used these babies’ first mark making to create 26 beautiful collages illustrating our special corner of the world. Karl Harris, our early years project manager then tasked participants at Project eARTh and Thomas Fields Care Home with the acrostic poems for each word, ably assisted by writer Lucy Jackson – who also created this foot-tapping, hip-swaying song with more children and families (click to listen).
 
Now that all the participants have had their copies of the book, it is now available on general sale for everyone to enjoy! At just £15 a copy, you get an rich book to treasure and at the same time supporting High Peak Community Arts to continue our mission.
 
 
 

Gathering research for 13+ projects

We couldn’t run an intensive 13+ project this October as our funding application was unsuccessful (it happens!), so we are now taking stock and gathering more detailed feedback and ideas from our current 13+ contacts, so that future applications are well designed.

If you know anyone in this age range (including young adults) who would benefit from progression in arts and creative activities, or who are perhaps looking at their options for the future, please pass on this questionnaire:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScr0gekVrTNsk5yJRT58Ax2ojStL43i2bbbradAXM83ixCKlw/viewform?usp=sf_link

Thanks!

Looking back on 2022 in the Youth Programme

The dust is settling on another really challenging year, and taking stock we can see some special moments of 2022 which may have gone unrecorded on our social media and newsletter! 

Our three Kickstart workers each wrote an article earlier in the year, but since then, long time participant, and now worker, Georgia Tyler has submitted and achieved her GOLD Arts Award, the first for High Peak Community Arts.  The award is a nationally recognised qualification which carries UCAS points (to go towards university entrance), and takes a lot of commitment and self discipline to complete – so well done to Georgia! 

Another long-time member of Film Cuts Club, Heather Wright, also achieved her Silver Arts Award at the same moderation, using the leadership section to direct a film for the first time.  Here they are pictured together in our cheesey certificate-giving ceremony!

We had a great day at Manchester Science Festival in half term, where, armed with our HPCA iPads, some of the young people decided to interview anyone and everyone involved in the festival.  First we saw Turn it Up: The Power of Music which featured examples of music technology through the ages (I spotted a Walkman just like the one I had in the 90s).  More impressively there were examples of the kind of assistive technology that can enable people with disabilities to be musicians – which gave us ideas for things we can buy in the future for music workshops.  The rest of the festival had more of a market-place feel, which allowed everyone to roam at their own pace, with interviews with scientists from the future, museum volunteers and even Sally MacDonald, Director of the Museum of Science and Industry!

Just as we were all feeling worn out, the movement piece on the top floor gave a relaxing end to the day.  In the subdued lighting of a warehouse room, a camera was picking up the movements of everyone there and beaming them back through the projector in a form of a cosmic light show.  I’d like to say everyone had a nap on the minibus home, but that was not the case.

Then on November 12th we took a trip to Manchester’s Contact Theatre to see Touchy, from Liverpool-based youth theatre company 20 Stories High.  The show was a combination of five short films telling different, very personal stories from young people.  Then in the second half six young people from the company performed songs, rap, spoken word and dance, again telling a range of personal stories which were very moving.

The films are well worth a watch and are available online here:

https://www.20storieshigh.org.uk/show/touchy/

It has been lovely to get back to taking trips out of the High Peak – broadening young people’s horizons is an important part of engaging with arts and culture, and it has been sorely missed during the pandemic.  Reflecting on these experiences, especially for the 13+ age group help shape the direction of our own youth projects.

Film Cuts Club

Saturdays, from 11.30-3.30, from now through til July!

A perfect show!

We had a fantastic show. Aunty’s Antidote went down a storm in Buxton, with 25 young people involved on the night – on stage, in the band or working backstage. A huge thank you and well done! to them and the other 35 young people who contributed to everything that went into the show.

Here are a selection of our favourite pics from the performance!

 

Read more about the show and rehearsals here.

School programme.

A red-hot end to our year of school’s activity!

The heatwave struck in the last week of term, and yes we did postpone one of our sessions, but still fitted it in before the end of the week, finishing the lovely little animation below!  This year we have delivered one-to-one creative mentoring in eight different schools, and small group music sessions in three, and met and supported more than 60 creative young people who have made animations, artwork in different media, photographs and music.  Some have joined our Film Cuts Club on a Saturday, or will do in September, others have come to Tall Tales and in the small groups will complete Arts Awards in September.

Tall Tales Summer School & Tickets.

Everything set for our 9th annual summer school!

Get your tickets here!

It feels good to be planning a full live public performance again, after two years of producing films and broadcasts.   Starting on Monday 1st August, we will be at Buxton Community School four days a week for two weeks, where the young people will form bands, devise dance and drama, write songs and scripts and shoot pre-filmed sections.  We have Leo & Hyde with us once again, bringing some VR art into the mix, joining our regular artist team of Andrea, Benn, Gareth, Lucy, Lydia, Mark and Trixi.   We have record numbers of young people signed up from Glossop, New Mills, Whaley Bridge and Buxton (and Ukraine), and young workers and volunteers from previous summer schools coming to help, so it promises to be a melting pot of creativity!

At Easter we began with a theme of ‘My Orbit’, and carried on working in Gamesley and Fairfield in tea time sessions from May to July.  Ideas from our participants so far have led us to a framework story about the lengths we will go to care for our nearest and dearest, how to look further afield and extend a welcome to those who enter ‘our orbit’.

By the end of the two weeks we will be ready (?!) to present ‘Aunty’s Antidote’ on Monday 15th August, at St Anne’s Parish Centre, Hardwick Square West in Buxton.  There will be two shows (6.30 & 7.30), and tickets (£5 and £3 concessions) are available from ourselves, or Eventbrite.

The record numbers of participants and extra-long summer school is thanks to government Holiday Activity Fund income which joins our grant from The National Foundation for Youth Music and contributions from The Bingham Trust, Derbyshire Music Education Hub and Waitrose. 

Tall Tales!

Explore your creative ambitions!

We are pleased to announce that our youth music and creative arts sessions are returning for another season in Fairfield and Gamesley.  Anyone aged 8+ is welcome to come along and try playing in a band, writing and performing songs and making art, animations and stories.

These sessions are a lovely way to meet new young people who might not yet know where their creative passions lie – People can try a wide range of things and if they enjoy it, they can sign up for our Summer School.  Sessions start with toast and squash, and activities are run by professional artists and musicians who specialise in collaborating with young people to create new original work from the ideas the group bring.

Sessions run from 3.30 – 5.30 on Mondays in Fairfield Community Centre (St.Nick’s) and Wednesdays at Gamesley Community Centre, from Monday 9th May through to the end of term (see our Calendar!).  The Summer School will be in the first two weeks of August (dates tbc) when young people from both areas will work together to produce a public performance to share.  Not everyone wants to be centre stage, so again there are lots of options, from being in the band, to making the costumes and props and helping backstage.

For more information contact Sophie on 01663 744516 or sophie@highpeakarts.org.

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