Work being done to review the Heritage and Culture offer in the district has been a topic of discussion this week. At Monday’s Newark and Sherwood District Council Policy and Performance Improvement Committee, Deputy Leader and Portfolio Holder for Heritage, Culture and the Arts, Councillor Rowan Cozens, presented a summary of activity, both undertaken and planned, to offer more arts engagement for local residents.
Comments in the 2022 Resident Survey called for more arts and culture events and activities, and, over the past year, the District Council has worked with local partners on a number of relevant projects.
The Council has continued to work with other members of Newark Cultural Consortium to deliver and promote Newark Creates events including the very popular Wild In Art BookBenches around Newark, the daisy themed installation over Newark Market Place and the fantastic Festival of Creativity.
An agreement has also been made with Newark Town Council to provide curatorial support for the Town Hall museum and to work towards better alignment with the National Civil War Centre – Newark Museum.
Many of the events not only fulfil the desire for more arts activities but also align with other objectives from the Council’s Community Plan. For example, in support of the Motion for the Ocean, artists have been commissioned to develop initiatives in Clipstone and Ollerton and to work with local schoolchildren to produce the summer surfboards and beach hut exhibition in Newark’s Buttermarket while community art projects in Balderton have also shared this theme.
Various graffiti art projects have also promoted the Council’s values around green initiatives.
Councillor Cozens said: “It has been such a positive year in Heritage and Culture with a fantastic amount of activity taking place and an amazing number of residents engaging with the arts.
“Heritage, culture and the arts are hugely important for so many reasons, from bringing people together to supporting mental health and highlighting how wonderful our community is.
“Because of these benefits and their value, there is always more that we can do and there are so many exciting projects in the pipeline. These include, after around 40 years of false starts, the first credible and costed plan to site the Kiddey Sculptures which could mark the start of a new art trail across the town taking in a dozen businesses.
“We are also looking forward to building work starting early next year for the Castle Gatehouse project for which we have secured £1.2 million from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and a further £3.3 million from the Towns Fund.
“£80,000 has also been approved though the budget process to deliver plans aimed at increasing access to music in Newark and Sherwood which are being informed by feedback from local musicians and music providers.”
Last year, Arts Council England awarded the Heritage and Culture provision at the Council ‘National Portfolio Organisation’ status and, through this, an array of ‘Open Doors’ activity has been delivered across the district including music works in Ollerton for people with care and support needs; arts awards for home-educated children in the Millgate area of Newark; music and movement sessions for children and their parents in Rainworth; community led touring exhibitions in Bilsthorpe themed around mining; and work with the visually impaired to develop arts projects with Newark’s train stations.
Recent work through the NPO has enabled items from the Council’s collection of 95,000 objects, many of which have local or national significance, to be taken out into the community across the district as part of the ‘Our Heritage’ project.
The NPO has also funded a series of Artists in Residence at the National Civil War Centre who have had the opportunity to display objects from the reserve collection in their gallery to inspire their work.
The Centre itself has recently been awarded the national Kids in Museums Family Friendly Museum Award for Best Small Museum, recognising the fantastic range of events for all ages which take place there from a Mini Museum toddler group on Thursday mornings to monthly Family Saturday events and Hidden History Walking Tours of the town, all resulting in admissions being 25% ahead of target for the first quarter of 2024.
The Learning and Participation Team at the Centre have also been honoured with the prestigious Sandford Award for their nationally acclaimed schools programme.
The neighbouring Palace Theatre Newark has also had a successful year, having just hosted the national Bill Kenwright Ltd. tour of Blood Brothers to sold-out crowds. Their varied and thriving programme of shows, from drama to ballet, comedy, music, and community dance and theatre, culminates in the annual pantomime.
In 2023, this achieved record sales and this year’s Aladdin sales are currently a full house ahead of where they were last year. General theatre admissions were also up 55% for the first quarter of the year from the same period in 2023.
The Council’s Arts Development Team have also been working with the community and arts partners to deliver activities including the Live and Local Village Ventures programme, a live arts programme which takes place in rural communities each year, while the artistic talents of residents have recently been recognised with a photography competition celebrating the district.
