It’s been a very eventful year and like most organisations we are looking forward to a restful break over Christmas. We’ve had a really exciting 12 months! This was our first full year of face-to-face delivery since the pandemic and we were able to deliver a number of place-based artist residencies over the summer at Bolsover Castle and Creswell Crags and work with a wide range of new communities and participants.
We were also able to deliver our full festival programme this year with the 10th Anniversary of our Tapton Lock festival in Chesterfield and the hugely popular Bolsover Lantern Parade. You can find a wonderful film celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Tapton Festival on our website: https://junctionarts.org/community-projects/tapton-celebration-event/
It has been so great to be back delivering in communities again and we’ve had some amazing feedback from participants who have really enjoyed the opportunity to meet up again physically and benefit from all that culture and creativity have to offer.
In the past few months, we received news from the Arts Council that they are increasing their investment in Junction Arts through their National Portfolio (NPO) programme for the next 3 years. This means that we will be able to work with more communities across Chesterfield, Bolsover and NE Derbyshire. It also means that we will be developing a new children’s festival next year in Chesterfield over the summer. We are so grateful to the Arts Council for investing more money into the communities of NE Derbyshire and a huge thank you to the staff team and Board who have worked so hard to put together such an exciting creative plan and convincing case for increased investment.
In this final newsletter of the year I want to make a special mention of Annie French, our current Chair of Trustees. Annie has been on the Board at Junction Arts for six years and has been the Chair for the last three. During Annie’s time we have seen some big changes including our move to West Studios in Chesterfield, and we have grown our ambition and reach as a charity in the local area. It was great to see Annie rewarded for all of her hard work at the Voluntary Sector Awards this year by receiving the ‘Trustee of the Year’ award, and I speak on behalf of all of the Staff and Trustees to say thank you Annie, this was really well deserved!
Finally, on a personal note I will sadly be moving on from Junction Arts next year. After 12 amazing years I’ve taken the hard decision to move to a new role and we are hoping to recruit a new MD in early 2023. I just wanted to say a huge thank you to all of the volunteers, partners, businesses and artists I’ve had the pleasure to work with over the past 12 years and a special mention to the best trustees and staff team a Managing Director could ever hope to work with! It is a truly wonderful charity, with a brilliant team doing amazing work in communities. It has a really exciting future planned and I know I’m going to miss Junction Arts immensely!
Anyway, I hope you all manage to have a relaxing and revitalising break over the holidays and we look forward to seeing you all in 2023.
Paul & the Junction Arts Team
