Cheshire Marketplace Review

Curious Minds held the first of our sub-regional marketplace events on 6th June at the Brindley Arts Centre in Runcorn, which proved to be both an excellent locality and venue for this event. Add to that a sunny day and a Roman centurion to guard the entrance and the scene is set for a lively exchange-which indeed it was.

We were building on the work undertaken by the our Schools Partnership Team Alice Birdwood and Jude Bird, our  Curious Agent Steph Brocken, in her research into heritage organisations in Cheshire and our advocates  Andrew Vaughan, Helen Kelly, Sue Caudle and Ann Brian, working in schools across the same area. The event was co-ordinated by Steph in conjunction with Curious Minds.

It was good to meet so may interesting people and has provided us with a broader idea of what school’s expectations and interests are and how our centre can best address them.

The event not only drew in NPO’s from Cheshire and Manchester but also organisations who had received Grants for the Arts project funding including Liverpool companies, grass roots organisations, local authority cultural initiatives, museums and galleries; 30 in total. This offered organisations a chance to network between themselves and find out about each others work, as well as meet the school staff from Cheshire primaries, secondaries and SEN settings, again we had 30 who signed up to the event.

The richness and diversity of arts and cultural organisations in the area was literally “on display” with stalls featuring films of the work, publicity materials, props from performances, and musical instruments.

Thanks for all your hard work, I found it a really useful event. I will indeed feed through any school partnerships that grow as a result of this event.

Curious Minds was able to profile Arts Mark and Arts Award at individual stands and engage with schools on conversations in a face to face way. Several of the attendees have signed up to the network and attended training subsequently.

We found this an excellent model to promote a vibrant atmosphere of dialogue and exchange between all attendees and we are tracking the connections made at this event for outcomes, collaborations and alliances.

Jude Bird