Youth Arts Network High Peak Launches

  Feb 8^th saw the launch of the initiative to promote youth arts in the High Peak and make the many varied youth arts activities better connected.
The well attended meeting looked at how a network could work, and what it could do to help groups and organisations promote their work, collaborate with our neighbours and achieve more! They agreed to quarterly meetings plus updates through this blog.
The initiative has come from some joint work between High Peak CVS and High Peak Community Arts and Community Arts have some resources in the next year to promote some collaborative projects.
If you missed the meeting but want more information or want get involved contact Sophie Mackreth at Community Arts:  sophie@highpeakarts.org  
or Nigel Caldwell at High Peak CVS  nigel@highpeakcvs.org.uk 

Highlights from discussions on the night:
We asked "How can a network help what you do?"
People said:

• Give a forum to promote groups and find out what else is out there for young people.
• Share resources like equipment and space.
• Share expertise and invite people in to give information, e.g. funding talks.

We asked "What is your biggest hurdle?"
People said:

• Getting out to reach all the young people in the area, i.e. rural communities or working on the streets etc.
• Fund raising and making activities self-sustaining financially.
• Getting full use out of the facilities in the district, e.g. Buxton Opera House, Museum & Art Gallery

We asked "How could we collaborate?"
People said:

• Draw more groups to participate in existing events, e.g. Buxton Christmas Lights Switch On or PB Theatricals working with Buxton Art Gallery on their annual G&S exhibition.
• Use a common date in the calendar / or a local cultural or historical theme to build a project for lots of groups to participate in.
• Different groups having a distinct role in a project, e.g. A visual arts group making banners for a performance event.

Launching the Youth Arts Network! Relaunched!

We had to cancel the launch of the network, originally scheduled for 2nd December - who knew it would snow so early in the year?

So now that we've all enjoyed Christmas and embraced 2011 with enthusiasm, we are ready to re-launch the launch!  On

Tuesday 8th February from 3 - 5pm

we will be meeting at:

Buxton Dome, Derby Uni, Devonshire Campus, 1 Devonshire Road, Buxton

for an open discussion about how a network could work, and what it could do to help groups and organisations promote their work, collaborate with our neighbours and reach our higher ground!

From 3pm there will be refreshments and a chance to look through the information we have already drawn together about groups that exist in the area.  We will then come together to meet and there will be a chance for groups to present more information about what they do.  Our colleague James Cross spent considerable time last year researching other youth arts networks, and he will give a brief overview of his findings, describing how other networks function and what they get out of it.  With that overview in mind, we will then break into small discussion groups, looking at different topics and gather as many ideas as possible.

With the hard work done, we will take a closer look at the resources available to the network, with a word from Dan White at the Donut Centre in Chesterfield and another look at the functions of this blog - opportunities to post information and use Facebook to reach a wider audience.  Finally we will sum up the discussion groups and suggest some options for the future.