FESTIVAL CITY - A Young Roots Heritage Project

“Festival City” aimed to provide 25 young people 17 to 25 years old the chance to learn the skills required to design, create and exhibit a digital media exhibition about the Norfolk & Norwich Festival 1772 – 2011. “Festival City” took place between April and August 2011. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund “Festival City” it was lead by Norfolk & Norwich Festival in association with youth arts organization Culture Works East, the YMCA and Norfolk Records Office. Participants from YMCA Norfolk gained a unique insight into the festival and created a digital media exhibition influenced by the Norfolk & Norwich Festival and the people and places who have taken part in the last few hundred years! Participants explored and learnt about their, and Norwich's cultural heritage in relation to the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, particularly that of the urban spaces of Norwich and the historic churches and venues that have been used as places of performances during Norfolk & Norwich Festival. Festival City successfully connected hard to reach young people to their local architectural and cultural heritage using the digital media and the opportunity to connect and participate in Norfolk & Norwich Festival, the longest running city based arts festival in the country.

Working alongside professional photographers, broadcast journalists, historians, international performers and sound designers they learnt all the skills required to create a digital exhibition of the festival using original, reproduced archive materials, new images and audio recording exhibited in The Forum, Norwich 2^nd – 4^th July 2011! They also created a Festival City podcast with support from Future Radio. Participants gained a Level 1 or 2 Arts Award, as well as taking part in specialist master classes, training and workshops.

Festival City was a youth-led project, with the young people involved making all the key decisions. The “Festival City” Production Group were responsible for marketing, invigilating and reviewing the public exhibition. The Production Group was lead by 5 x Young Heritage Leaders and helped install the exhibition and took part in activities including marketing, budgeting, health and safety and evaluation. They also took part in research visits to galleries and exhibitions. Take a look below to see examples of the work created by the young people of Festival City, including a tour of the exhibition, the podcast and so they can tell you about Festival City in their words interviews with participants and project partners. We are really proud of what they have achieved so this page is a tribute to them, their achievements and just how hard they worked. Enjoy!

Festival City Podcast by cultureworkseast

Update!

Things have been so busy here at Culture Works East recently that we haven't had the chance to update the blog! I thought I would post a few links to let everyone know what we've been up to recently and what we have coming up...

Firstly, we are just wrapping up our 'Festival City' project, in which we worked in association with the YMCA, Forum and Norwich Records Office to provide 25 Young People from The YMCA in Norwich a chance to delve into the City's Cultural Heritage - Click here to see what it's all about...

Have a look at this brilliant Music Video created at one of our recent Music Video Production Workshops at The Hewett School. The video features the track 'Free' by a young band called 'The Solution'. We have just finished a run of workshops at The Hewett, Cavell and Bignold Schools including Stop Frame Animation, Guitar FX, Fossil & Puppet Making and Carnival Costume making workshops. Check out our Gallery section in the coming weeks as we'll be uploading some of the best work from these workshops.

Finally, We are really excited to be providing some free creative workshops for 12-17 Year olds at this year's Latitude Festival! Click here for more information...

In addition to Latitude, you will also be able to catch us this summer as part of The Garage's Summer activity, The Barford Festival and Jelly Festival. We'll post more details on these as and when we have them.