Five Ways to Wellbeing

An exciting new programme of workshops and activities aimed at improving mental wellbeing  is being run through a partnership between Great Yarmouth & Waveney Mind, Seachange Arts and Community Wellbeing Company.

The workshops will introduce the Five Ways to Wellbeing concept, which outlines five simple actions that when practiced regularly can improve our mental wellbeing. These can be simple things such as being active, learning something new or doing something nice for a friend. Participants will also be given a Five Ways to Wellbeing diary to help them chart their own progress throughout the project.

Included in the programme is a series of Five Ways to Wellbeing Heritage Walks where participants will have the opportunity to create an arts project based on observations and what interested them on the walk. This might include film making, photography, music, dance, theatre or creative writing with participants being encouraged to showcase their work.

‘The Five Ways to Wellbeing programme is open to everyone’ explained Corrina Giles of Seachange Arts ‘It’s a great way to meet people; it encourages you to try something new and we hope people can see the benefits and progress they are making as a result of the Five Ways to Wellbeing activities.’

The project participants are also encouraged to volunteer in their communities, with the opportunity to volunteer at Great Yarmouth’s Mardi Gras which will take place on Tuesday 8th March. See earlier blog for more details about the Mardi Gras event.

To volunteer at Mardi Gras or to take part in the Five Ways to Wellbeing programme or for further information, please contact Corrina by email mailto://corrinaatseachangearts@googlemail.com or call 01493 846550

Information provided by SeaChange Arts.  For further information visit www.seachangearts.org.uk

Mardi Gras

   Mardi Gras 2011

The 2011 King Street Mardi Gras took place on Tuesday 8th March from 4-6.00 pm. The event  featured entertainment, food and customs with an international theme, both in the street and inside the event’s tented area on King Street.  This is the second Mardi Gras event to be held on King Street: the weather was much kinder than in 2010 and there was a good crowd.  The event is organised by SeaChange Arts to celebrate the international festival that is Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day .

The theme this year drew heavily on the notion of spring versus winter –  represented throughout the event in the form of ‘Fatso’ and ‘Hempen’ – two characters from the Lithuanian culture who do battle to signify the changing of the seasons. “We introduced Fatso and Hempen at last year’s event,” explained SeaChange’s Chief Executive, Joe Mackintosh, “This year, we’re developing their role and they will be central to the afternoon’s activities.”

The roles of Fatso and Hempen were filled this year by performers from Générik Vapeur, a French street arts company who SeaChange Arts work closely with as part of a European partnership, called ZEPA. The partnership enabled SeaChange to bring the full Générik Vapeur Company to Yarmouth last year to showcase their legendary street show Bivouac as part of the Out There festival.

The Mardi Gras event is designed to bring communities and businesses from around the King Street area to work together. The area is earmarked as a new cultural quarter for the town, focused around the £8m redevelopment of St Georges Chapel into a multipurpose Arts Centre.

For further information on the event visit www.seachangearts.org.uk 

(Information provided by SeaChange Arts)

Re:generation

Emerging and established artists are being invited to submit work for a new community exhibition which celebrates memories of Great Yarmouth and the town’s current regeneration.

The exhibition runs from Saturday 5th March to Friday 12th March 2011 in Great Yarmouth’s Library Gallery. The work of local young people will be shown alongside artist’s work along with recollections and stories of the town provided by members of the community, all of which relates to the theme of regeneration.

The Re:generation exhibition is part of a national project, which creates youth led arts-based volunteering opportunities. The programme is funded by V Inspired; an independent charity for 16 -25 year olds, supported by an Eastern Region consortium including Great Yarmouth based Seachange Arts. The programme gives volunteers the opportunity to develop their skills, gain experience and bring positive benefits to their community.

‘In the early stages of the project I found older generations living in the town had a broad knowledge of the history and heritage of Great Yarmouth and I felt that the young people of the town would benefit from the sharing of these experiences’ explained Siobhan Johnson, Re:generation lead volunteer ‘This inspired me to create a project that would highlight the positive work that has been carried out during the regeneration of Great Yarmouth. I am hoping that the Re:generation exhibition will highlight the rich heritage and the potential for a positive future in the town.’

To enter the exhibition artists must be sixteen years and over, living in Norfolk and Waveney and can submit three pieces of artwork on a CD to be viewed by a selection panel of local arts professionals. The exhibition is open to artists working in painting, drawing, photography, prints, sculpture and textiles.

For a chance to exhibit, application forms and the terms and conditions can be downloaded from www.seachangearts.org.uk/project/-regeneration .The deadline for entries is Monday 7th February 2011.

For more information contact David Jones– Telephone: 01493 846187, email: mailto://David1@seachangearts.org.uk.

Norfolk Tour of Britain

The Norfolk circuit of the Tour of Britain  race will begin on Tuesday 14th September 2010 from the Market Place in King’s Lynn and end mid-afternoon on Thursday 16th September on South Beach Parade in Great Yarmouth.

The riders enter Great Yarmouth at Bastwick for the final section of the race. The Tour continues on to Caister on Sea past the offshore Scroby Sands wind farm. The race then follows the coast to Great Yarmouth where it travels through the town along the River Yare, before reaching the finishing straight on the South Beach Parade near the Pleasure Beach Gardens.

As the crowds get ready for the riders to race through Great Yarmouth to the finish of Stage 6, SeaChange Arts will be throwing a pedal powered party to celebrate the occasion.

On Yarmouth’s seafront, from 11am artist, Kate Munro will be on hand to help indulge your bike in the travelling ‘Pimp Your Bike Trailer.’   Bring along your bike and decorate it with a little Victorian eccentricity.

At 11.45 and 12.45, the Think Bike Stunt Display Team provide a breathtaking stunt cycle demonstration, and then from 11am you’ll be able to step on board the Out There Pedibus. Take a jaunty journey around town or sit back and enjoy live music… in motion, from local groups The Ferries and Love Hate Fate.  The amazing Rimski and his pedal powered piano will also be on hand from 11.15 am, to regale the crowds with his unique blend of cycle cabaret while Johnny White brings us art-on-a-bike with his fleet of weird and wonderful kinetic sculptures. 

Bringing a little Gallic chaos to proceedings, French street arts company Generik Vapeur will be in Yarmouth’s Market Place at 1pm. Twelve rural bike-riding policemen are lost in town and cause mayhem and panic with a plethora of conflicting information.  Follow their antics all the way to the seafront in this hour of hilarious pandemonium.

For more information, click here

Out There Festival

A massive free festival of international performance and participation took place in St. George’s Park, Great Yarmouth on the 18th and 19th September. Out There is now the largest street arts festival in the region.

Joe Mackintosh of SeaChange Arts says, “We love being Out There! Out on the east coast, we think we’re a little bit special – perched on the edge of the UK and tipping a wink to the continent! Our programme reflects that.”   This year one of the titans of international street arts, Générik Vapeur performed the English premier of their long- running street show, Bivouac, which was a huge success.  Hundreds of people followed the blue-painted performers as they made their way down from St. George’s Parade and along Marine Parade banging and rolling huge oil drums, preceded by a flame throwing iron dog and accompanied by a lorry upon which three musicians were performing.  Fire crackers were being let off to startle the swarming crowd and acrobats appeared on buildings.  The sense of expectancy was tangible amongst the milling spectators and the fireworks finale was magnificent.

From France Chamboule Touthéatre and two of the original founders of the parkour phenomenon performed in a show called Fusion.  Add to that performers from Sweden, Belgium, New Zealand and Australia all brought  a sense of the weird, the wonderful and the unusual.

Local artists were commissioned to lead community workshops to create mobiles, kinetic and metal sculptures and flags and banners to decorate the festival park, and to deliver participatory workshops on site at the festival.

Out There has been developed with the support of the ZEPA network, an innovative project partnering nine French and English festivals to create and share artists, tours and expertise. While born of international partnerships the festival is founded on the historic qualities that make Great Yarmouth unique with its rich heritage of circus and seaside entertainment.

The Out There festival is pure fun and not to be missed -watch out for the 2011 Festival!  For more information click here.

Silent Hobo to create murals at St. George’s

SeaChange Arts are calling for nominations for a Great Yarmouth community champion to take their part in two murals being commissioned for the town and supported by the heritage lottery fund.

The murals will be used to decorate hoardings around the St George’s Chapel development. The work depicts key points in Yarmouth’s heritage and cultural life, from earliest beginnings, through maritime and tourist heritage up to its focus in 1960s youth culture with the Mods and Rockers.

The murals are being created by Bristol based artist Silent Hobo.  A character-based artist who works on large-scale street murals, Silent Hobo’s work mixes comic art influences, graffiti and Manga. His work is featured on buildings around Bristol and has been exhibited at The Tobacco factory in Bristol and Selfridges in London.

Silent Hobo will work on the 30-metre mural for St George’s Chapel during two visits to the town over the coming months. The work will be created on panels, which will be attached to the hoarding around the chapel during its renovation into a multi-purpose arts centre. It is expected these will stay in place until major works are completed. Following that, individual panels will be donated to various groups around town with the successfully nominated local figure receiving the panel featuring them.

As the murals will exhibited in the King Street area and are part of the ongoing regeneration project there, SeaChange Arts would like people to nominate community champions from the King Street and Middlegate areas. “We’re looking for someone who’s an unsung hero, someone who enhances their community, environment or who supports the work and lives of others,” explained Sarah James. “They could be a neighbour, a friend or a relative, perhaps someone who works tirelessly for charity, the environment or inspires in any aspect of life.”

Nominations can be made by emailing their name and 100 words explaining why they’ve been nominated to mailto://David1@seachangearts.org.uk Alternatively, nomination forms can be picked up in venues along King Street.

Get Started with Metal Sculpture

Are you aged 16-25, unemployed, not in education or training and interested in gaining skills in metalwork and welding? The Prince’s Trust, working with support from Seachange Arts, Enterprise GY and the Working Neighborhoods Fund is staging a ‘Get Started with Metal Sculpture’ course in Great Yarmouth starting on 2nd August and running until Tuesday 10th August.

The free seven day course will give you an opportunity to have a go and develop your own creative metalwork skills. At the end of the course you will be able to design and create your own fire burner, using skills such as welding, brazing, flame cutting, riveting and forge work.

The course will enable you to gain new employable skills which will help to find work in the engineering and construction industry or to go onto further education or training; with help and support on hand for all participants to be able to achieve this. On completing the course, you will receive a certificate presented by his worship the Mayor of Great Yarmouth, Councilor Micheal Jeal.

To gain a place on the course contact Laurie Miller-Zutshi at Seachange Arts on 01493 846 187 or email: mailto://creativelearning@seachangearts.org.uk

For more information about the Get Started with programmes go to princes-trust.org.uk or call 0800 842 842.

Street Arts: Volunteer Opportunity

SeaChange Arts is proud to present Bivouac by Generik Vapeur!

This year the Marseille based street-arts company Generik Vapeur will present their weird and wonderful piece Bivouac at the Out There International Festival of Street Arts and Circus on September 18th 2010 in Great Yarmouth.

Created in 1984 Generik Vapeur pride themselves on being a ‘traffic of actors and machinery’. Around twenty technician/artists make up the company and they develop their artistic work on the scale of a town or a landscape, finding inspiration from its people and from what can be found on site, whether it is recycled industrial materials or objects from everyday life. Generik Vapeur have no borders and can turn any public space into a creative space, whether it is in France or abroad, and their creativity and artistic production are always developed with the local community.

SeaChange Arts are currently holding auditions for 10 lucky volunteers who will have the chance to perform alongside the company in this unique performance which will transform Great Yarmouth for one night only.

Volunteers must be aged 16+, physically fit, and available to rehearse in the evenings during the week beginning the 12th September. They must also be available on Saturday 18th September for the performance and be prepared to be painted blue!

Group auditions will be held in Great Yarmouth on Friday 4th June from 2pm onwards. To book an audition slot or find out more information please contact Laurie Miller-Zutshi on 01493 846 550, email mailto://creativelearning@seachangearts.org.uk or text 07530 735 491.

Renewal

AN OPEN EXHIBITION FOR NORFOLK AND WAVENEY ARTISTS

GREAT YARMOUTH LIBRARY GALLERY, 12TH APRIL- 24TH APRIL 2010

 The exhibition features 15 artists showing 23 works in painting, drawing, prints and sculpture. All artists are based in the Norfolk and Waveney area and were asked to interpret the theme of ‘Renewal’. They were selected by a panel of judges, and all works are for sale. The exhibition runs from Monday 12th April to Saturday 24th. 10am to 5pm.

Renewal Artists:

Jamie Andrews- Harry Baker- Sarah Caputo- Katarzyna Coleman- Jacqui Fenn- Colin Giles- Chris Hann- Bridget Heriz- Paul Howard-Clare Johnson- Julia O’Leary- Neslihan Nebioglu- Sandra Rowney- Paul Zawadzki.

RENEWAL: OPEN ART EXHIBITION

AN OPEN EXHIBITION for Norfolk and Waveney artists, to be held at GREAT YARMOUTH LIBRARY GALLERY, 12TH APRIL- 24TH APRIL 2010

Seachange Arts is inviting artists to submit work for an Open Exhibition, which will run from Monday 12th April to Saturday 24th April 2010 in the recently refurbished Great Yarmouth Library Gallery. The theme of the exhibition is ‘Renewal’ and artists can interpret this theme as they wish.

The exhibition is open to all artists living in Norfolk and Waveney aged 16+. The aim of the exhibition is to showcase and celebrate artistic creativity in the region whilst providing an opportunity for artists to sell and exhibit their work.

Selection of artwork is by a panel of judges from the local arts community. To take part, contact SeaChange Arts for an exhibition entry form outlining conditions of entry. The deadline for entries is Friday 26th March 2010

Contact David Jones, Exhibition Co-ordinator: David1@seachangearts.org.uk or telephone 01493 846187