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A Rural Review 2016: Week 10!

Hello everyone and welcome to the Rural Arts blog. For those who are new here, each week we do a blog entitled ‘A Rural Review’ where we look back on all the fantastic things we have done in the past week and what we are looking forward to in the near future. As always, it has been a very fun week here at Rural Arts, and with exciting events galore in the pipeline, there no time to waste – let’s kick off with…


What’s been happening

Creative Case Events
Just a small snapshot of the hugely successful day

Tuesday was a very exciting day for Rural Arts, and the ON Tour team in particular. A few of the Rural Arts staff and the fabulous theatre company Ragged Edge Productions spent the day exploring opinions surrounding ethnically diverse performances; firstly in Northallerton College in the morning, and then Newton-Le-Willows village hall in the afternoon. Both of these events had a performance of Ragged Edge’s in development performance The Chef Show, followed by a discussion and exploration of the show and wider themes of diversity in our community. This day was made possible by the Creative Case North, a scheme ran by ZENDEH theatre company and supported by the Arts Council – which focuses on making the making culturally diverse work more accessible for everyone in the North. We had a fantastically insightfully day and want to thank everyone who got involved for being so open and engaging and warm – it left us all feeling very uplifted! These findings will be presented back to other arts organisations in the North at a sharing day in April, and we can’t wait to see what everyone else got up to.



Tweet Up Event! 
Look at all of these happy faces!
As our regular blog readers will know, every Thursday between 7-8 on twitter is Thirsk Hour – a chance for all local businesses to promote themselves and make Thirsk a more well connected town. This week we did away with social media and met in the flesh! Thirsk Hour Live, ran at the fabulous Italian Fantino’s, allowed all who get involved the chance to meet face to face, whilst also allowing anyone new to the twittering phenomenon to learn the basics necessary to get cracking! It was a brilliant evening, with laughs and learning in equal measure -we will certainly be doing another one soon so keep your eyes peeled. While those eyes are peeled – why not follow us on Twitter? It is full of useful updates, brilliant pictures and upcoming events – remind you of anything? Click HERE to see what all the fuss is about…


What’s coming up

#CREATEtour! We need you!
Get involved! You know you want too…
Are you aged between 11-18? Do you live in Selby? Are you interested in performance? Then we have the project for you! Yes are young peoples project, #CREATEtour, is returning and we are thrilled to be back. If you didn’t know, this project is an opportunity for young people to work with a professional touring theatre company, create their own show and then tour it around local venues as an opening act for the performers, all free of charge (I know, good right?) This year we are working with the fabulous theatre company The Harmonettes, who have toured nationally and internationally with 5 star reviews from magazines such as Time Out and The Telegraph – so as you can imagine we are pretty darn excited. We have a taster day for the project at Manor Farm in Tadcaster next saturday (19th March) at 1:00pm or 2:30 pm. To learn more about the project or to sign up for the taster day, e-mail joe@ruralarts.org – or give us a call on 01845526536. You can also click HERE to learn about previous #CREATEtours.




FRESH Exhibition
We are very excited for this!
This month is a very exciting one for our gallery and our courtroom. After a very successful launch of our ‘FRESH’ performance season, we have launched our FRESH exhibition! Featuring the work of the top emerging talents of the north-east, this exhibition will run from the 25th March to the 9th April. Between these days our courthouse will be full to the brim of exciting, contemporary cutting edge work. Why not come down and see it, from 10:00am – 4:30pm, so you can gloat to all of your friends when they become the leading lights of the British art that you saw them first!






Abi Moore Music
This is next week! Can you believe it?! Yes next week is the return of our ON Tour season and with it, we are thrilled to announce that Abi Moore is coming to North Yorkshire. The singer-songwriter is staunchly independent, has a truly unique sound and leaves every gig with the audience wanting moore (sorry.) She is doing 4 performances from Wednesday to Saturday next week, in all corners of North Yorkshire, so why not click HERE to find your local performance! A Cafe Nero champion who has payed over 700 gigs for them, Abi has won many plaudits for her unique style, including the classic Scottish song-writing, money raising superstar Midge Ure, with whom she has toured. To whet your appetite, here is Abi’s beatuiful rendition of Elbow’s ‘One Day Like This.’



This fantastic cover brings us to the end of this weeks blog. Thanks very much for reading – and remember, we do this every week! Make sure you pop back next week to find out how are events that were ‘upcoming’ actually went, and what other exciting things lie ahead. We hope very much to see you for our next ‘Rural Review’.