SO FESTIVAL 2019
What did we get up to in 2019?
We welcomed back the Community Stage!
A hugely successful weekend that again highlighted the diverse nature of the arts and culture industry and also, what a perfect home the East Coast is for this event. The most wonderful backdrops, Mablethorpe’s Sherwood Fields and Tower Gardens in Skegness provided the home to yet another, magnificent weekend of free entertainment.
We welcomed back the Community Stage as part of our new Activity Zone. The power of community is always visible in abundance throughout the area and the festival always enhances this even further. Community artists taking part included a group from Linkage, the Lincolnshire based Community Trust that supports people with learning difficulties. Adults from their Toynton site entertained with a mix of performances and dances from popular West End shows.
Here are some lovely comments from our audiences:
Memories and Moments
Enjoy highlights, performance snippets, audience reactions and special moments from SO Festival 2019, in Mablethorpe and Skegness…
Take a look at the best bits from our 2019 Community Stage and Activity Zone and find out why SO Festival is important to our community…
We introduced the Blue Zone to our Festival Site
We introduced a new permanent fixture to our festival footprint – The Blue Zone! A relaxation area for visitors with disabilities, life-altering conditions or special educational needs, as well as their family and carers. The Blue Zone featured; experienced staff members, shade and quiet seating, refreshments and relaxation activities.
This zone was supported by Without Walls Audience Development funding.
We hosted another community engagement project with Children's Links
We want to increase and broaden our connections with people who live in areas that suffer the greatest deprivation in East Lindsey in order to understand individuals and the community’s needs and how we can help them. So, we decided to use exciting, challenging and risky play opportunities as a way of engaging with children and their families.
We partnered with Children’s Link’s to provide a Play Ranger service to the children and young people in Mablethorpe to encourage individuals to open up and feel able to talk about the things that impact their lives and their views on how things could be improved.
We also asked them to work with young people to design and deliver an activity to be part of SO Festival 2019. They also hosted some fun activities at out festival during our Mablethorpe day which were enjoyed by many. These activities included rocket making workshops, circus skills workshop and a hula hoop and face painting competitions!
The aim of this project was to lift participants out of their ‘everyday’ and providing an enriching experience. We hope to continue our community engagement work in the future.
We launched our creative networking events, The SOcial
Being a large rural county, keeping connected with other artists and creatives has always been a difficult task. Recognising this and with the desire to be better connected with local artists and creatives, we held our first SOcial in August 2019 at our festival. An informal opportunity for artists to have a coffee, connect and chat.
We held our second SOcial in the December of the same year in Skegness and decided to organise The SOcial on a regular basis. An opportunity for artists and creatives to chat, connect and collaborate, growing in popularity with artists and creatives from across the county attending.
