Adur Festival - community funding available for Lancing and Southwick Street parties

Hello and welcome to my blog. As you may have read, our local Adur Festival is growing in size and popularity so keep your diaries clear between 30th May - 14th June. This year's theme is Food of Love and for all those taking part in this celebration of Adur arts and culture, the closing date for registering your event is 6th March.
     This year the festival will be marketed more widely, partly because it has received funding for a Marketing Manager. One of his roles is to increase the amount of community involvement so I spoke to him recently about the availability of two £1000 grants to put on a performance or produce an interactive work of art for the highly successful street parties.

Robert Heath

“I’m in charge of marketing at Adur Festival, so my job is to get as widespread participation in the festival as possible. As part of that, I want to draw people’s attention to one particular funding opportunity.  

We have two £1000 grants to give to community artists or organisations to produce a performance or interactive piece of art related to the theme of Food of Love, to be showcased at the Southwick or Lancing street parties on 13^th June. The grant is not available for the Shoreham street party.

We will consider all applications as long as they relate to the theme and meet the following criteria:-

·      the artist, group or organisation lives or works in the Adur District

·      parts of the community contribute to the piece i.e children, local actors, musicians, acrobats, singers, writers, dancers or artists

·      the Sompting Big Local Hub (for the Lancing street party) or Fishersgate Centre (for the Southwick street party) is one of the centres at which the community contribute, for instance, by attending workshops or rehearsals

·      the production or work of art has to be weather resistant

·      the applicant is able to deliver it

·      it has to be delivered within the budget.

As the Adur Festival is built on the principle of community engagement, the idea is not to have it simply produced by one artist or organization, but to have something created by members of the community. For instance, the applicant may have an idea for a play, and local artists make the scenery and local musicians provide the music. Quite a lot of hours will be required to create, direct and run this, which is another reason why it's better to have more people involved. We can help too and can provide advice on things like logistics, feasibility and costs. We may also be able to share our equipment so you do not have to buy or hire it.

It wouldn’t matter if you had never done anything like this before as long as you have a clear idea of what you would like to do, how you will do it, who you will involve and what it will cost.  We can help you with the application form itself.

The closing date is 16^th March but be aware, the closing date for registering an ordinary festival event is 10 days earlier, on 6^th March.

If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact me on robert.heath.92@outlook.com”

Comedy Waiters 

      So could you be performing alongside the Comedy Waiters at this year street parties? 
     I'll be back in a fortnight with an update on the people's movement to get the Adur Ferry Bridge/ Ferry Road Improvement Scheme completed but, in the meantime, thanks for dropping by and see you soon.
     Ta ra for now.