Latest news from minerva hq

Summer Showcase 15th july!!

Lynk Cheshire Presents...
PLATFORM and TESTBED
We are pleased to announce that this year, Lynk Cheshire has partnered up with the National Association of Youth Theatres to present a 'mini' Regional Youth Theatre Festival programme. 
This year, this will be split into two parts:
TESTBED Saturday 2nd September 10am-4pm @ The Kingsway Campus
TESTBED is our unique take on the 'play in a day' format which will enable young people aged 7-16 to come together to work intensively with a top level theatre practitioner to create a piece of contemporary devised performance. Cost: £25 per person.
PLATFORM Sunday 3rd September, 3- 9pm @ The Kingsway Campus.
PLATFORM offers groups the chance to share their work to a supportive and fun audience. TESTBED groups will share their work and we have an open call for any groups in the Cheshire and North Wales area to come and present a short piece of work.
Watch this space for some additions coming to this programme from the 30th August- 1st September.
For more information or to book a place, please contact community@minervaarts.com or use our Contact form here.

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The Souling Project
In December 2016, Minerva were thrilled to learn that we had achieved a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund's Sharing Heritage programme to run a brand new project called 'Souling'. This project is based on the re-visiting and re-invigorating of Folk Dramas known as 'Souling' or 'Soul-caking' plays that were performed throughout Cheshire, working with professional songwriters, musicians and directors.
Our locations for this project are:
Congleton
Astbury
Bunbury
and, with the support of our friends at Express Youth Theatre, Lymm.
Through this project we will be working to embed research skills, oral history techniques, song writing, script writing and a final performance of a revived version of the plays, each of which are unique to their location.
We are currently recruiting groups to take part in this project and if you are interested in finding out more, please get in touch. We are looking for schools, youth groups, uniformed groups, local history or special interest groups to join the project and will be holding some Open Days in our locations during March. Details will be posted here and on Social Media.
We will also be keeping a blog for the project on this site which will feature information about the project, the texts of the plays and photography and video from the project throughout the year. This can be found here.
Stay tuned to learn more!

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Youth Theatre Dates
Minerva Arts would like to wish all our supporters, members and friends a very Happy Easter.

All our Youth Theatres will return in January on the following dates:
Seniors Wednesday 19th April
711 Saturday 22nd April
Malpas Thursday 20th April

First sessions as always are offered as a free taster with no obligation. For further information about each of groups please visit our Youth Theatre page. If you would like anymore information, please get in touch.

We are delighted to announce that the end of our Youth Theatre term will be a Special Summer Showcase at Grosvenor Park Activity Hut from 11am-1pm on the 15th July.

At this event not only will we be sharing the work of our two Chester Youth Theatre groups but we will be extending our arms to the general public to join in an open 'Drama-Lympics' session where our Youth Theatre members will team up and pit their drama skills against each other in a points battle.
Who will be victorious? Our teams need YOU to win this battle!

Arts award achievement in st helens

Minerva Arts have been working with St Helen's Young Carers over the Half Term break. Funded by the Arts Award Access Fund we worked with young people aged 13-17, and over the week they got involved in exciting drama and film making workshops. As part of the week they completed a Bronze Arts Award and went to Liverpool visiting the Beatles Story and the Tate. The project culminated in the group creating a video which aims to raise awareness of young carers in the borough. It was a brilliant week, with the young people having lots to be proud of. 

Youth Theatre Case Studies
We recently decided to ask some of our former Youth Theatre members who are currenly off in the world making waves in performance to complete a case study for us about the impact that being part of Minerva Youth Theatre had on them.
Read Will and Marissa's stories on our Youth Theatre page.

Minerva Arts joins national programme

We are delighted to announce that thanks to our relationship with the lovely folks at Youth Federation, we have become part of the 'Active Youth Clubs' programme. This is a two year project funded by Sport England and supported by UK Youth. This project allows us to offer five brand new programmes of work across both 2016 and 2017, helping young people between the ages of 14 and 25 get more active. It is really exciting to be able to be part of this project as we are able to bring a unique arts-based approach to the issue of physical activity.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Minerva Arts is a Company Limited by Guarantee No. 8098260 and a Charity Registered in England and Wales No. 1149379