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Latest News from Minerva HQ

Sandbach Young Producers Launches

We are very excited to announce that our first new project of 2021 is now live! Sandbach Young Producers is a project that will help bring young people into the planning and management of the brilliant Sandbach Transport Festival, in partnership with Spare Parts. This is a great opportunity for young people in Cheshire East and you can read all about it below...
To get involved or find out more, contact emilyatminerva@gmail.com.

The Alternative Xmas Stocking Returns... Virtually!

We were thrilled to bits to share the work of our Youth Theatre groups with the world on Saturday 19th December via the wonder of live streaming. Each group provided a piece of pre-recorded content that included drama, poetry and audio which we streamed via Youtube. The link to catch up on the stream if you missed it is here and we are still accepting donations to help us move forward into 2021 and everything it brings with it at our Localgiving page so please if you do watch the stream, consider donating a ticket price.

Youth Theatre Update

Thanks to be Out of School Settings guidelines we have been able to run our Youth Theatre sessions in person since September (baring the second lockdown) and will be continuing to do so after Xmas if we are allowed.
We are thrilled to announce that this will also now include our three new groups, Middlewich Juniors and Seniors and Lymm Youth Theatre.
We will be opening the doors to new members (within our new COVID-safe capacities) for the first three weeks of term only to preserve consistent bubbles, so if you would like to get involved, make sure you get in touch with us as soon as possible.
We believe that it is really important to be as open as possible with all our parents/ carers and friends about how we plan to make our workshops COVID-safe, so we have attached our brand new Risk Assessment for anyone to view at this link. If you have any questions about our procedures, please don't hesitate to get in touch with Artistic Director Steph directly on steph@minervaarts.com.

Minerva Arts In Lockdown

Well it's been ten weeks now since the lockdown began and we at Minerva Arts have been working hard to make sure that all the brilliant stuff that we were developing before this happened has not gone to waste. So here's a little rundown of what we have been up to:

Since the beginning of lockdown Steph and Hollie have been taking it in turns to produce a weekly drama challenge video called #TheatreThursdays. These are shared on our Facebook and Instagram pages at the same time every week and invite you to take part in a short exercise to boost your drama skills.
Starting on 22nd April, we have taken our Youth Theatre online. This is a brave new world for everyone and a pretty scary thing but our young people have taken to it brilliantly. Currently sessions are running for Sandbach, Chester Seniors, Upton and a combined session for Malpas. We will be launching an exciting new session for Lache very soon. More info on what the groups are working on in lockdown can be found on our Youth Theatre page.
We will be running some open workshops throughout August to bring some creativity to the summer period so stay tuned to the website and our social media to get the updates on how to book.

There are lots of other exciting things in the pipeline too and we'll let you know as soon as they pop up.

If you would like to give us a helping hand in providing the best possible return to normal service, give our leaders some time to plan great online workshops and deliver some open sessions online please consider contributing to our fundraising appeal which can be found here.

Minerva launches Virtual Work Experience

As we draw into the summer months, this is usually the season where we start to welcome a variety of Year 10 work experience placements as well as our University of Chester Work Based Learning students. This year, of course, that can't happen, but we have decided to throw an offer into the universe and see what happens.
If you are a Year 10 student, in Further Education or a Level 5 university student and you have missed out on a work experience placement this year because of the COVID-19 crisis, get in touch and we will organisae a virtual placement for you. There is more info on our Work Experience and Volunteering page and you can get in touch to start a conversation.

New Youth Theatre Case Study

This year, we were grateful to be supported by Sanctuary Housing to un our Lache Youth Theatre group. As part of their support to us, they requested that we send them a case study after the year of funding had completed to help share with them the impact that their funding was having on the young people and the community in Lache. Jude got to work and produced a brilliant write-up of the journey that one of our members has been on since she joined at the start of the pilot project back in September 2018. We loved it so much we thought we'd share it and you can now view it on out Tumblr blog right here.

Go International With Minerva Arts

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.

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!