Latest News from Minerva HQ
Minerva Arts COVID-19 Statement
Minerva Arts takes the safety of all our participants, artists, volunteers and audience members extremely seriously. As such, in the light of the developing situation around the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and in communication with other similar organisations around the country, we have decided to make the following decisions regarding our current programming.
We have also published the guidance below to support members and parents who are attending Youth Theatre https://docs.google.com/document/d/17QrcsiSi_JJ7QP1vDmXmEtkd3KbMx5aj4IzKYRn8lSE/edit?usp=sharing
- Upcoming Youth Theatre shows Grimm’s Forest and A Chance to Dream will both be postponed until a later date. Tickets that have been purchased online for Grimm’S Forest will be refunded. All groups will be informed of new performance dates as soon as we are able to schedule them.
- Our Youth Theatre term will end on the 27th March. We will not be returning to Youth Theatre immediately after the Easter holiday as usual. Instead we will remain on a break until May Half Term. Parents and carers will be contacted during the week beginning 25th May to confirm a re-start at all groups from Monday 1st June.
- Sandbach Transport Festival is cancelled. This means that Sandbach Youth Theatre will seek an alternative date and location for their next performance. Please stay tuned to the website and social channels for updates on the Participation Programme for the festival, we have some exciting ideas!
- As you will probably have guessed, our international residency project GROW has been postponed and will now take place later on in the year.
If you would like to give us a helping hand in providing the best possible return to normal service, give our leaders some extra time to plan great workshops, give us some great props and set or let us hold an extra session to make up for lost time, please consider contributing to our fundraising appeal which can be found here https://localgiving.org/appeal/normalservice/
We have also published the guidance below to support members and parents who are attending Youth Theatre https://docs.google.com/document/d/17QrcsiSi_JJ7QP1vDmXmEtkd3KbMx5aj4IzKYRn8lSE/edit?usp=sharing
Work Experience Rocks at Minerva
At the start of March we hosted our first work experience placements of the year with two students from Year 10 at Whitby High School in Ellesmere Port joining us for the week. Chloe and Finley were excellent additions to the team and really rose to the challenge of their placement. We are very proud of the work that we do in hosting work experience placements throughout the year, from Year 10 placements, through sixth form and college and including our annual Work Based Learning students from the University of Chester. Check our a blog that Chloe wrote for us on our Workshop Experience and Volunteering page here. And if you would like any information about taking a placement with Minerva Arts yourself, then give us a shout via the contact page.
Spare Parts Festival Participation in Sandbach and Crewe
In Spring 2019, Minerva Arts were approached to support the team on the Spare Parts Festival with delivering a high quality participation element to the festivals in Crewe and Sandbach in 2020. We were successful with securing funds from Awards for All to support this work and are now starting to deliver this work. The projects will support both the Sandbach Transport Festival, happening on 14th April and the Crewe Traction Festival on the 4th July and will involve professional artists supporting community groups, producing a parade and developing a Young Producers group for Sandbach. Please visit the our Projects page to keep up to date with our progress in producing these exciting projects.
Go International With Minerva Arts
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Last summer we were very pleased and proud to learn that we had been successful in being awarded our first Erasmus+ project, working alongside partners in Italy, Greece and Portugal to deliver the GROW project. This is a performance residency project where 8 artists from each of the partner territories will have the chance to spend 10 days in Melissa, Southern Italy, living and working together to create performance based on myths and legends about the genesis of the world.
All eight places on this project have now been awarded and we will be introducing them to you very soon on our Project blog page right here. |
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Art = Action
In October we were informed that we had been successful in achieving funding from the #iwill programme. This is a national programme framed around Social Action, projects that support young people to make change in their community through campaigning, research and being creative. Our project is called Art = Action and will see our Youth Theatre groups in Lache and Kingsway undertake a research project and work with local experts and groups to create a piece of theatre based around their chosen social action theme to help change perceptions or raise awareness.
Stay tuned to the website, social media and our blog site http://minervatumbles.tumblr.com to see updates from the project when it launches in January. If you would like anymore information about this or any of our work, please Get in Touch.
Anniversary Celebrations!!
To celebrate our 10th Anniversary, Minerva Arts is held our first ever Fundraising Event on the 26th October at Tarvin Community Centre. We were supported excellently by the centre themselves, The Ottomen caterers, the Cestrian Community Players, Natalie Pierce Jones and Will Jones, our lovely former Youth Theatre member who's case study can still be read on our Youth Theatre page. Steph wrote a blog about the celebrations and the opportunity to reflect on the last ten years which can be read on our Tumblr here.
Fundraising
We have recently stepped up our efforts to diversify our revenue streams to support the huge expansion that we have had in 2018. Part of this is starting out in the world of online fundraising. We are now live on shopping platform Easyfundraising and donation platform Local Giving. You can find out more about our fundraising efforts and see how you can get involved and support our work on our brand new Fundraising page right here. We will be instigating several other new initiatives throughout 2019 so watch this space!
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Minerva Arts is a Company Limited by Guarantee No. 8098260 and a Charity Registered in England and Wales No. 1149379