Ofton Festival 2019

Well, that’s a wrap for another year of Ofton Festival. Thank you for following our journey on the blog over the last few months and to those who liked commented and shared our activities online.

Huge thanks must go to our funders and partners without whom the festival wouldn’t have made it off the ground for another year. Our crew sailing in the good ship PlatformThirty1; Jodie, Lisa and Sally who tirelessly organised, planned, dreamed and marketed the festival to ensure it was a success.

Massive thanks also to all of our wonderful artists for their workshops and performances, and their energy throughout. Our volunteers who helped to guide people and staff the displays during the festival. To all of the schools who took part in co-production workshops with our headline artists to create the wonderful installation pieces and performance that were available to all who attended over the course of the weekend.

It’s time! Festival weekend is upon us! A jam packed line up of arts activity will be descending on Alfreton town this weekend and for those of you that didn’t pick up one of our printed programmes here is the digital version. If you’d like your own copy it can be downloaded here

The Mighty Creatives have very kindly contributed funds to support the documenting of the festival. This has helped shape the content for the blog and also ensured we’ve been able to capture a variety of images, video and audio in the lead up to the festival and will also mean that we can document all of the wonderful creative activity that we have planned for the weekend.

We spoke to Laura Bates at TMC to find out more about her role within Cultural Education Partnerships across the region and also her thoughts on Ofton Festival. 

“My role here at The Mighty Creatives is to support Cultural Education Partnerships (CEP) in their development, construction and strategic thinking. It’s about helping them to shape their vision for local communities and to understand what that local community needs. So in the case of the Black Shale CEP (Led by Platform Thirty1), it is in a minority in that it is in a rural area. So as a result they don’t have access to a lot of infrastructure such as Arts Council portfolio organisations, so their work has to be more hyper-local or localised due to there not being the infrastructure that a big city or town has. That’s why it’s so important that Black Shale work in the area that they do because it’s about access to arts and culture. Helping to provide opportunities, enrichment of peoples lives, enabling the growth of peoples skills or creation of potential pathways into careers or further and higher education.”

“There’s a challenge to ensure that young people in rural areas have opportunities that are of equal value to somebody in a city or who has access to high quality arts centres and facilities. I think that is what Black Shale are providing through their work with local groups and the public. They are providing opportunities where there are fewer. It’s amazing that young people are too being given a voice through projects, they are being listened to and through that it’s very empowering. It’s why TMC are investing in the CEP because they can see the value in the work in that area.”

“The reports I heard from the first Ofton Festival were amazing! The empowerment of young people, the fact that young people had a voice and that Sam and Jodie at Platform Thirty1 were co-producing events, all of that provided young people with opportunities that young people may not necessarily have had. Just to hear that young people were enjoying the leading of arts events was fantastic. The festival is helping put Alfreton on the map and giving young people the chance to take pride in their locality and see that what they do has and brings worth with it. The plans for this year have just exceeded what took place first time around. It’s been great to see the build up and the development of a community of artists, supporting a community of young people and families.

Our intrepid Ofton Festival team were out and about recently spreading the word about the festival as it nears kick off! Festival producer Sally Lemsford and lead artist Martin Blackham met plenty of Alfreton residents at Party in the Park and captured some of their stories on film.

Creative workshops are a big part of Ofton festival and space is required for our artists to deliver their workshops for the public to get involved in. We are incredibly lucky to be working with Alfreton Town Council who have supported us by giving us space ‘in kind’ throughout Alfreton. If you’d like to book on to one of our planned workshops at the festival you can see what’s on and find out more information on how to book over on our Facebook Event Page.

You might have seen our printed festival programmes out and about in Alfreton detailing all of the fantastic artistic activity we have planned. They were printed by local Derbyshire printer Ians Print. With over 30 years in the print industry, they have handled the printing requirements of thousands of clients in Derbyshire. With a range of printing capabilities as well as finishing equipment, they are well equipped to meet a variety of briefs. 

Working closely with local graphic designer Billy Holt, Ian’s Print ensured we were supported every step of the way to make sure that our designs were up to scratch and sized correctly, importantly making sure none of our information ended up on the cutting room floor!

Pupils at Morton Primary School were treated to a work in progress workshop to see how theirs and other schools ideas were being incorporated into Face Up Theatre’s performance for Ofton Festival. 

Ian Pringle and Becky Matter unveiled ideas for a large scale interactive board game that can be played by members of the public at Ofton Festival. It incorporates side games, movement, music, song and characters to create a fun and silly take on the traditional board game. All of the elements of the game were created from co-production workshops held in various schools in and around Alfreton.

Ian Pringle is an actor, facilitator and mask maker. He trained as an actor in 2001 at the Academy Drama School in London. Since leaving drama school, Ian has worked for a number of different companies - most notably, he spent 5 years working for the award winning mask company, Geese Theatre, based in Birmingham. During his time with Geese, Ian developed skills as a group work facilitator, working with some of the most difficult and hard to reach groups in the UK. This ranged from adult offenders in prison settings to looked after children in the community. Ian started Face Up in 2009 after recognising that there was potential in using these approaches in broader community settings.

Becky Matter is a Nottingham based actor, director and community artist. Having toured with Theatre in Education and Community Theatre companies through the 1980s and early 1990s, she taught Performing Arts at New College Nottingham for twenty years. Since then she has worked on numerous arts and theatre projects with companies across the UK and her own company The Independent Scrutineers, with audiences ranging from babies to people over a hundred years old.

As we near the start of Ofton Festival 2019 we thought that we’d take a look at some of the organisations and people that are helping to make it happen this year, starting with Arts Council England who have part funded this years festival.

Arts Council England is a government-funded body dedicated to promoting the performing, visual and literary arts in England. Since 1994, Arts Council England has been responsible for distributing lottery funding. This investment has helped to transform the building stock of arts organisations and to create lots of additional high quality arts activity.

The Arts Council champion, develop and invest in artistic and cultural experiences that enrich people's lives. They exist to support activities across the arts, museums and libraries – from theatre to digital art, reading to dance, music to literature, and crafts to collections.

Between 2018 and 2022, the Arts Council have pledged to invest £1.45 billion of public money from government and an estimated £860 million from the National Lottery to help create experiences for as many people as possible across the country.

Besides the workshop activity that’s taking place in the run up to this years Ofton Festival 2019 there’s a lot happening behind the scenes. With so much to organise and prepare we thought we’d shine a spotlight on some of our project team that are working hard to make things happen.

Jodie Cresswell-Waring - Project manager

Jodie has been working in and between the arts and education sector for over 10 years. Starting out as a trained Fine Art Lecturer Jodie soon realised she had a specific interest in working within the third sector. Feeling drawn to working with vulnerable, at risk, challenging, hard to reach and on the cusp people who face inequalities or find themselves in challenging life situations. Jodie spent over eight years in an arts organisation and as a freelance practitioner seeking to unlock the inner potential of young people, children and adults, supporting them to have a better chance in life. Jodie has and continues to be devoting time to sourcing staff and artists, ensuring the project remains on budget and most importantly that everything is done on time so that the festival is a huge success.

“I highly value a cohesive, creative and autonomous work culture. Having worked extremely successfully for over 8years with my gifted business partner, Samantha Whelan, we’re investing all of our collective and seasoned experience to devise ‘platforms’ for a variety of stakeholders at Platform Thirty1. Our key shared value is the deep appreciation of people. We wish to mobilise, support and enable people in whatever way we can to get the best out of their journeys. We know social change doesn’t happen overnight or in isolation, so we’re developing effective partnerships and networks in communities that genuinely serve the locality, empowering people to address gaps and needs. We hope to cultivate social change through creativity and make a meaningful legacy which all involved can be a part and proud of.”

Lisa McCabe - Project Coordinator

Lisa worked in the hospitality sector for most of her working life starting out at the bottom of the career ladder and working her way up to doing both front and back of house roles. This included coordinating functions and events alongside completing a lot of training and development. Three years ago Lisa got to a stage in which she was delivering apprenticeships and barely working hands on in pubs. This prompted the decision to leave the industry completely making the move to Platform Thirty1 which has given Lisa the chance to flex her transferable skills in the arts/ creative sector. Lisa has been working hard to organise our participatory workshops in schools with the professional artists that are leading up to the festival.

“I have always loved art since doing it at school and not quite sure why I didn’t go any further with this as I was pretty good at it! I love anything hands on and ‘crafty’ and so it’s great to get to see all of our wonderful workshops take place and to work with such passionate artists in my new role.”

Sally Lemsford - Festival Producer

Ofton Festival 2016 was a participatory arts festival that was funded by the Coalfield Regeneration Trust as an alternative training and participation programme for young people. The festival was co-produced and commissioned with 15 young people completing Bronze Arts Award. Artist Sally Lemsford facilitated the festival and two creative industry graduates were the emerging festival producers. The activity created a positive buzz around reaching 500+ participants and wider spectators. The event was built around bringing arts to the town through exhibitions in shop windows and a series of workshops; some closed in local schools/community settings and many open to the public on the weekend of the festival. The unlocking of local and forgotten buildings featured strongly in the collated feedback from the public, with them saying their curiosity for the space lured them to engage with the art fully. Many said they didn’t think art was for them before and they enjoyed the celebrations through participation.