FESTIVAL OVERVIEW
Be sure to DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAMME here with details of the weekend, timetables and tech info on how to be part of it
We were delighted to play a small part of the first two London Borough’s of Culture in Waltham Forest and Brent and made some great connections (thank you Chris Tofu ;-).
If you saw what happened in Londonderry in 2013 and Hull in 2017, you’ll share our excitement about what is about to be unleashed when Coventry becomes the UK City of Culture for #Coventry2021.
Sadly the launch has been put back to May but there’s no need to wait til then as we’re love streaming a three day Community Art Festival from a cardboard cathedral on the playing fields at Joseph Cash Primary.
Our #Coventry21 weekend of 26-28 Feb consisted of a range of inspiring talks, uplifting performances, creative workshops and community events and looked something like this:
FRI: FUN DAY FRIDAY
Love streamed from John Cash Primary in Coventry but with contributions from schools across the UK using our new collaborative performance platform.
The school day like no other was led by head teacher Helen Nelson and co-curated with author and artist Jude Yawson, with an evening for young people.
SAT: CONNECTING COMMUNITIES
A day on and off the screens to inspire families and the whole community by showcasing creativity around Cov and across the UK, with a Saturday evening of performances
Saturday evening saw the World’s Biggest Disco under the Disco Tree (in our imagination)
Curated with Cov’s Cultural Collaborator and Art Ambassador, BBC CWR presenter Sandra Godley.
SUN: THE GOLDEN GENERATION
Our #EVOLVeD21 co-conference led by Prof Stephen Heppell looked at the point of school and how we can help all our kids leap ahead.
A fantastic day with a world class line up of speakers, it proved to be a mile stone thought provoking day for parents, teachers and all creative carers - people and organisations who care about creativity, children and all our futures.
What’s more, Prof Heppell launched a revolutionary global project to inspire and celebrate our Golden Generation.
FIRE PIT CHATS
If you’ve ever been to a festival, you’ve probably nipped back to your tent after a fun packed day to catch up with friends before heading out for the evening.
Well that’s what our fire pit chats are about, where every evening at 7-8pm you could sit down with legendary Artist, Impresario and Mister Connector Chris Sullivan. In the past he’s chatted with film maker to The Clash Don Letts, The Kemp brothers from Spandau Ballet and The Krays, Sugg’s from Madness to name but a few.
Take a look in the programme each day to see who he chatted with at #Coventry21
#COVENTRYMOVESTOGETHER
The #Coventry2021 City of Culture year was launched on Saturday 8th June with a day of pop-up live events that were liev streamed.
The climax of the day was a world first, a multi channel audio soundscape - Coventry Moves Together that members of the community were encouraged to listen to outside in their community on any audio playback device they had to hand.
As each channel was slightly different it created a wonderful soundscape.
We revisited Joseph Cash Primary and discussed it with the children and community there.
#INSPIREDTOLEARN21TOUR
Based on our hugely popular live in school talks and workshops, these exciting sessions are for the whole family and cover aspirational messages and stories about the power of creativity and community to help our children and young people make a living, make a few friends and even make the world a better place.
It aims to help connect our kids with their art (whether paining or photography, fashion or football, cooking or coding, rockets or robots)
At the end of the session, we will launch a 50m high cardboard rocket to inspire everyone to aim high with their art
BOOK NOW
We only have 21 of these assemblies on offer so email yourturn@Steamco.org.uk now to book yours after the #Coventry21 Festival
REWIND
Have a look at the film a dad made for us here of the story so far.
And check out the film here of our #ARTCAMP20 Festival in Devon where we built ‘Castles in the Sky’ - we had real camping, eclectic art trail and performances.
You can watch all the sessions from our Art of Community festivals here:
THANKS TO YOU
All of the above has been made possible by emergency grant funding from Arts Council England, The National Lottery, LGfL and Cultural Recovery Fund support from DCMS and HM Treasury for which we are very grateful.
It’s not only enabled us to completely re-engineer our community engagement model but share that knowledge with other organisations to help them do the same.
