Lyme Youth Arts get £8,900 lottery boost (From Bridport and Lyme Regis News)

Lyme Youth Arts get £8,900 lottery boost

2:22pm Thursday 30th August 2007

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IT'S full steam ahead for Lyme Youth Arts (LYA) and their grand plans for this year's ArtsFest as they receive news of their successful Lottery cash bid.

Their successful bid for £8,900 means the groups can now go ahead with a series of arts-based workshops for young people, to take place in partnership with Lyme Regis ArtsFest.

The cash will pay for a month of workshops in September for young people aged 13 to 21, building towards a finale in the Marine Parade shelters on the last weekend of ArtsFest Week.

The news has been welcomed by LYA leaders, including volunteer co-ordinator, Fran Williams, who said: "We are over the moon to get the money and really pleased to get the opportunity to work with Lyme ArtsFest to do something as exciting as this with young people in Lyme.

"I was very unsure whether we would get the money because I understand that a lot of people haven't been getting money recently because of the Olympic funding.

"I was just relieved because we put a lot of work in."

There are seven workshops planned, including sculpture workshops led by Annalise Renee and Darrell Wakelam, projection workshops, led by projection artist Andy Hawthorne, big light installations by James Hewlett, and stone balancing, by Adrian Gray.

Two other volunteers recently joined - Marshall, an instrument maker, and Jacques, a busker/musician, who will both help young people make instruments, which they will then perform with during the finale weekend from Friday to Sunday, September 28 to 30.

Joining them in their performances during that weekend will be a band called Hobo Jones and the Junkyard Dogs.

The workshops will take place at the Marine Theatre and InSPARation Youth Café.

Margie Barbour, who is chair of Lyme Youth Arts and artistic director of the Marine Theatre, is pleased the theatre is closely involved with LYA. "The Marine Theatre has strived to reach out to the younger community in the last year," she said.

"Our Lyme Youth Theatre has been very successful in educating young people interested in performance and we hope with Lyme Youth Arts to encourage young people excited by projection, sculpture, music, and all the many forms of creative arts, to see the Marine Theatre as a place that will welcome them to find an outlet for expressing themselves and to have fun."

But the driving force behind the whole of LYA are its four young people: Lally Owen, Johnny Wirril, Jack Loughlin, who is also the artistic designer, and the newest recruit, Phoebe Hill.

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