Shrewsbury arts venue gets £68k funding
A Shrewsbury arts venue has been awarded £68,940 by Arts Council England to launch a two-year project, which will work with young people from across the county.
The programme, which will be run by the Hive, will be available to people who may be NEET (Not in Employment, Education or training), have special educational needs, LGBT or experiencing rural isolation.
The funding will allow the Hive, which is based on Belmont, to work with partners to organise creative workshops, which will allow young people to try something new, explore, develop friendships, build their own confidence and have a say in the development of the project.
The partners involved in the project are former poet-in-residence at Birmingham FC, SPOZ, who will run workshops taking rap and spoken word into schools and youth clubs; Stans Cafe, which will bring drama to groups, encouraging expression through performance; and Grain Photography, which plans to work with groups to manipulate and mix photographic images and create an exhibition.
Meanwhile, The Song Lab will work with young people to create original songs that can be recorded at their studio in Birmingham, and Community Musicians will bring technology and music together with The Hive’s own Tech-to-Tune workshops, which make instruments out of household items.
The whole project, called Tuned In, will be brought together to develop and test the Hive’s emerging Evaluation Framework, which is designed to capture the empowering impact of our creative work with young people, and the wider benefits of our approach.
Sal Hampson, project manager, said: “We’re very excited to have received this funding. We are already in conversation with young carers, pupil referral units and local community centres as we plan 68 creative workshops across Shropshire.
“This is a great project for The Hive – so many different activities and groups of young people to work with is fertile ground for imaginations and creative ideas to produce something very special. We are already having some great conversations about possibilities which this project is flexible enough to accommodate.”
The workshops will begin next month (APRIL).
