Newsletter
July 2017
National Portfolio Funding
A
massive well done to our organisations who received National Portfolio Funding
from the Arts Council. These are Dancefest, C&T, Live & Local, Meadow
Arts and a new one Vamos. The funding is from 2018-2022 and is a major
validation of the work in the County. Special congratulations to Vamos for
joining the portfolio.
Festivals
The
summer is always a busy time for us in the county and WAP and its partners have
been involved in a number of high quality arts festivals. We thought we would
talk to a couple. First, we spoke to Polly Stretton from the Lit
Fest&Fringe.
FOCUS ON… Lit Fest and Fringe
Tell
us more about your festival?
Worcestershire
LitFest & Fringe—a not-for-profit volunteer organisation—has just delivered
their seventh Worcestershire Literary Festival which ran for 10 days from
launch night on Friday 9th June until the finale on Sunday 18th June. Fourteen
programmed events took place during those ten days. Post-fest, a free Midsummer
Solstice Walk on Wednesday 21st June started at Cripplegate Park, St John's and
looped around Diglis to return two hours later.
LitFest
Fringe events take place throughout the year, special ‘one off’ activities
around literary themes: workshops, performances, book launches, occasions like
Poetry Salons, and fixtures such as Earth Hour. We have three competitions each
year, Worcestershire Poet Laureate, Young Writer, and Flash Fiction, these are
well supported and we commission a collection and anthologies to be created as
a result. We celebrate the biggies in the literary calendar, for example:
National Poetry Day, Mental Health Awareness Day. Our website:
https://worcslitfest.co.uk/ will keep you up to date with happenings as will
the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/worcslitfest/
The
festival 'proper' was delightful, from the launch night which featured Young
Writer finalists performing their amazing short stories to Flash Fiction
winners reading their work leading unto the final of the seventh Worcestershire
Poet Laureate competition. The winner, after three thrilling performances, was
NINA LEWIS, she succeeds the (far from) outgoing Laureate, Suz Winspear, who
has done remarkable work in her year and has made great partnering inroads with
DanceFest as well as becoming poet-in-residence for the Museum of Royal
Worcester. Our new Poet Laureate has already performed at many events as
Laureate and has some wonderful plans for her year, watch this space!
Nina Lewis, taking on
the Poet Laureate position from Suz Winspear
And
how did it go this year?
The
quality of all of our programmed events was outstanding, absolutely top
quality, from our many 'home grown' performers and supporters through to the
touring theatre ensemble Clown Funeral who brought Luke Kennard’s poem 'The
Murderer' to life in an enthralling set in The Hive's studio space. We also
brought in Radio 4’s Natalie Haynes who gave a deeply thoughtful yet funny race
through the Greek classics and the ancient playwrights, tragedy AND comedy all
at once, amazingly good! Gifted London based poet/performers under the umbrella
of 'London Pride' did us proud, Robert Cole, 'our own' Math Jones and the
stunning Keleigh Wolf mesmerised us at the Worcester Arts Workshop.
Were
there any particular highlights?
As
above but our many local performers such as the Worcester Writers’ Circle who
put on a review of their work at Cafe Bliss were a delight, we had a trio of
strong women performers, Nina Lewis, Claire Walker and Kathy Gee performing as
a 'supergroup’: 30-40-60 in the studio space at The Hive. Wednesday saw the
alternative genre 42Worcester night in Drummonds which featured our stunning
friends The Antipoet, they just have to be seen to be disbelieved.
Our
regular monthly open mic event 'SpeakEasy' moved into the Thursday slot and was
a huge success; featured performer Pete (the Temp) Bearder was a revelation…
And to
the finale night—two slam championships on a single night—first up the Flash Fiction
short short story slam which was won by Roz Levens, then the poetry slam, won
by Mark Kilburn, and finally the Big Fat Raffle prizes were drawn, all
generously donated by many local shops and businesses, including supermarkets.
Signed books from performers during the festival were on offer as well as
artwork, jewellery etc. We then had a welcome drink to celebrate the end of
Fest for another year.
Who
do you work with most within WAP?
Steve
Wilson, the Worcestershire County Arts Officer, is the chair of the judges for
our Poet Laureate competition, so Steve and his team are the folk we have most
contact with. We appreciate the support for new ideas, opportunities to meet
new people and thinking about potential collaborations for events at the planning
stage. We partner and support many of the organisations who also attend the
various committee and sub group meetings throughout the year. It is important
to us to plan our main festival around local events and cross promote,
publicise, attend and perform at them, and it’s great to see everyone enjoying
LitFest & Fringe.
Next up
is Best of Young Jazz which formed part of the Upton Jazz Festival. We spoke to Manda Graham
FOCUS ON… Best of Young Jazz
Tell us more about your project?
Best of Young Jazz favourites, Second Line, top the bill in the Best
of Young Jazz venue at Upton Jazz Festival in June.
Launched in 2008 through a partnership with Upton
Jazz Association, Best of Young Jazz delivers workshops, activities and events
for young jazz musicians aged 12+ to develop their skills, especially in the
essential areas of improvisation and live performance. Best of Young Jazz
celebrates and develops the exceptional talents of the young musicians that it
works with and aims to nurture and support music making of the highest quality.
The project has been congratulated many times by
the jazz community for developing young talent in Worcestershire. Few music
projects across the UK are investing in jazz in this way and it remains
difficult for young people with a passion for the genre to find help and
support outside the project, particularly if they do not want to join Big Bands
or would like something in addition to that option.
Best of Young Jazz is
managed by an experienced team which is led by Steve Boffy with support from
Marie Oldaker and Manda Graham. In 2017, Best of Young Jazz alumni, Pete
Johnson and Matthew Hadden worked alongside the team to set up a new website
and coordinate a vibrant social media campaign which celebrated and shared the
highlights of our workshops and activities throughout the year.
The Best of Young
Jazz team – that’s Pete Johnson at the back, one half of our marketing team.
And how did it go this year?
2017 has been a
fantastic year for Best of Young Jazz. We are in the second year of our Arts
Council England supported Time to Shine
development programme. Time to Shine has allowed us to extend our programme
from focusing on the Upton Jazz Festival weekend in June each year, into a
year-round programme including two new elements; our Jazz Days schools programme and the prestigious Advanced
Masterclass programme delivered with support from new partners, the Birmingham
Conservatoire.
The highlight of the
Best of Young Jazz year comes around in June, when we invite all the young
musicians we have worked throughout the year together to perform over two days
in our marquee at Upton Jazz Festival. Thanks to the work we have been doing
over the past two years to bring new participants on board through our Time to Shine programme this year we
were delighted to welcome over 300 young jazz musicians, an increase of 100
participants on previous years.
Upton Jazz Festival embraces Best of Young Jazz, recognising its value
as a key attraction in the festival’s offer. Each year, audience enthusiasm and
anticipation around the programme grows as they know they will always find
something new, exciting, and refreshing in the Best of Young Jazz venue. The
marquee at Upton Jazz Festival in 2017 was often overflowing.
Who do you work with most in Worcestershire?
With its links to
Upton Jazz Festival, Best of Young Jazz has its roots in Worcestershire.
Over the past few
years, we have worked with a range of partners in Worcestershire. Severn Arts,
Worcestershire’s Music Education Hub, have helped us to roll out our Jazz Days programme of student workshops
and teacher training sessions to schools in Worcestershire and helped us to
advertise our Advanced Masterclasses and other music workshops to students
across the county. We continue to work with Worcestershire schools who focus on
jazz such as Prince Henry’s High School in Evesham and county-wide music groups
such as the Worcestershire Youth Jazz Orchestras (WYJO).
Upton-upon-Severn
dance group, Sway Dance perform as part of 2016 Best of Young Jazz programme.
Dancefest helped us
to put together a vibrant and exciting lindy hop dance programme and Upton-upon
Severn dance school, Sway Dance continued our dance programme with their
special performance on Saturday at this year’s festival.
Best of Young Jazz is
only possible with the generous support of a range of, largely
Worcestershire-based, funders and sponsors, find out about them our website.
How can people find out more about the project and contact you?
If you’re a young
musician and want to get involved in Best of Young Jazz there’s loads of
information on our new website: www.bestofyoungjazz.co.uk. You can also keep in touch by following us @BestofYoungJazz on
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
I hope
you all have a great summer and we will be back newsletter wise for September.
Steve
