News
Winter 2025 News Round-Up
Funny Wonderings since our last news round-up in November 2024…
On 2 December, some members of the High Peak Youth Robotics group attended a friendly scrimmage event in Chesterfield. Their ‘Head of Marketing’ explained what exactly it is they are working towards – read the blog post here.
We had our team Christmas meal at The Vault in mid-December, with a variety of quiz roungs, including the popular ‘minutes quiz’ to see if the Directors have been paying attention at our Board meetings during 2024!
We held our last workshop at The Green Man Gallery on 17 December and have been working to remove our kit from the building. There’s quite a lot of it, so we’re trying to sort and downsize somewhat. If anyone wants 12 human-rollercoaster cars, please get in touch!
We’ve been looking at some alternative storage spaces but have yet to find anything within our budget. If you have a spare room or cellar or garage or shed, in which we could store some boxes and bags, please let us know.
Our Changing Faces after-school workshops re-started in January in its new venue – St Anne’s Parish Centre. Over the Christmas break, Activity Lead, Ali was busy editing together the shadow puppetry film the group had been working on during the autumn term – watch the video on YouTube here (9m).
During the winter term, supported by a DCC Youth Emotional Wellbeing Grant, the group tried their hand at glove puppetry comedy skits, glove puppetry repair(!), painting with unusual tools, tried some acting-skill games with a local actor and we started making animal marionettes with sessions on skull sculpture, papier-macheing and painting. Plans for the spring term include finishing our marionettes, spray-painting, flowerpot people-making and collage-making. See photos on the project page here. There are a few spaces available if you would like to refer a young person – please email us.
In mid-March, we launched the Buxton Flowerpot Trail 2025 project. The theme this year is ‘Celebrate the Billerettes’. The iconic dancing troupe are celebrating 50 years of performing, having first ‘danced out’ at the Buxton Carnival in 1975. We hope the town will be filled with flowerpot Billerettes for the summer. If you would like to get involved, see the information here.
We’re after some orange material which we can use to make outfits – if you have any old bedsheets or t-shirts which we could use, please get in touch!
Behind-the-scenes, we have also been working to secure funding for our projects during the 2025-2026 academic year, reviewing our policies, and attending the Buxton Youth Engagement forum meetings with local authorities and other service providers.
We are, as ever, looking for more volunteers to help support our activities – either at our workshops or behind-the-scenes. If you would like to get involved with an active community arts group, please consider joining us – watch our recruitment video here (2m).
