Summing up Summer 2026
Dear reader, welcome to our news round-up for summer 2026 – another very busy one!
We created the Buxton Flowerpot Trail at the end of June and delivered the maps to our vendors, The Pump Room, High Street News, and Poole’s Cavern Visitor Centre, for the beginning of July. We were absolutely blown away by this year’s creations. The ‘Children’s Stories’ theme seems to have inspired lots in the town, resulting in our biggest ever trail – 73 locations! A massive range of stories were represented, from books to films to TV shows. Did you have a favourite? Read about the trail and see photos of the creations on the project page here.
Next up was Buxton Carnival. We paraded our ‘human rollercoaster’, 10 years after first doing so in 2016. Did you see us? You can watch a video of our day on the project page here. Young people from both our youth projects joined us, as well as our wider team and family members. We ran a workshop in mid-June to clean up all the rollercoaster cars and improve the fake legs. Carnival day was another hot one – the ice packs didn’t last very long(!) – but our performance seemed to go down well and it was so much fun to do. We won 1st prize in our category and were awarded a trophy from the Buxton Well Dressing Festival Committee.
Speaking of awards. The flowerpot trail was again part of the Buxton Festival Fringe and, after two previous nominations but no wins, we won the Visual Arts Fringe Award, and against strong competition. A testament to the amazing effort everyone put in to creating their displays.
A final note about carnival: we still have the cars but are happy to donate them elsewhere, if you know of any group which may like them!
Our after-school Changing Faces workshops continued until mid-July. During the last few weeks, we started brainstorming for a new shadow puppetry film, which we’re making this autumn.
August brought the usual writing of evaluation reports and making preparations for our projects to start again in September. We also did our annual environmental impact calculation for 2025/2026. Our calculation suggests we need to plant 3.7 broad leaf trees this year. We have the saplings growing!
At the end of August, one of our team travelled to Carmarthenshire in Wales to drop-off our Season’s Greeting puppets, which are to be used during the autumn. They are also booked for the winter, after Christmas, so another exciting festive season for them!
The beginning of September brought the end of the flowerpot trail and mid-September, the launch of our new projects for the new academic year: our Changing Faces project, with its after-school art club, and High Peak Youth Robotics, with its FIRST Tech Challenge.
We have spaces available at our after-school club if any young person in Buxton would like to join us. Sign-up on the project page here.
We’re very grateful to all the funding bodies and local businesses and groups who support these long-term projects and enable us to support young people in our local community.
Two additional businesses which have supported us this September include local business, Microton, and PCRefurb in Glossop, who have helped us out with kit.