Wow! What a year we’ve had here at Brave Island, we’ve had trips to Brighton and Southampton, eight fantastic Young Creatives of the Month, work placements on film sets and the Isle of Wight Festival, even design competitions for Christmas cards and bakery packaging! We’re already hard at work planning even more fantastic opportunities for 2024 but first, let’s take a step back and revisit some highlights of this year.
Brighton Trip
As part of the Queer Hearts project, we took a day trip to Brighton back in May. We had a very busy schedule including visiting an exhibition, going on a guided history walk and finishing the day off with an interactive comedy show as part of Brighton Fringe Festival. Everyone seemed to have a great time but don’t just take our word for it, here’s what one of our participants had to say about the day:
“I enjoyed the museum and the tour, learning about LGBTQ+ history is something that I’m passionate in as a member of the community… The show at the end was an enjoyable, hilarious end to the day and was very unique, I think it was well chosen and was a very welcome surprise.”
The Fringe Review Team
During Ventnor Fringe, we offered the chance for a group of young people from across the Island to come along and be part of the Fringe Review Team. This meant going backstage at the festival to interview artists and speak with the crew, as well as watching lots of shows for free. Some of the team put together reviews for The Fringe Review, a free newspaper distributed during the festival, whilst some recorded interviews and others typed them up for the Brave Island blog. You can read a review of the Circus Show, “Happy Daze” here and an interview with Magician Angus Baskerville here.
Circus Experiences with Barely Methodical Troupe
We teamed up with internationally acclaimed circus company Barely Methodical Troupe this year to offer two exciting opportunities. First up was an acrobatics workshop with some of their performers, where we learnt a range of acrobatic and devising techniques used by the performers to create their unique blend of circus/dance/theatre. We even managed to have the group standing on shoulders by the end! The next weekend we took a trip over to Mayflower MAST Studios to watch them perform their hit show KIN, here’s what the group thought:
“It was a very fun experience… I loved how friendly and helpful the team were… Really good fun and would love to do this again”
Skills workshops
As well as bringing in Barely Methodical Troupe for their acro workshop, we have had even more skills workshops in the last few months. This included an audition technique workshop that took place at the Isle of Wight College, a pottery workshop with Isle of Wight Pottery in Niton and a life drawing workshop at Quay Arts.
“I really enjoyed the workshop and had a lot of fun… I don’t think I would have made the leap to try out working with clay without the Brave Island opportunity… really friendly environment”
Picture the Music Competition
Earlier this year, we launched “Picture the Music” a competition to create music videos for tracks created by Isle of Wight musicians. The four finalists attended the Peter Cramp Awards in December at the Ventnor Arts Club, the top prizes were funds to be spent on filming equipment.
Darcy Homan set her video to Back and Forth by Cara Goodrem. She won £400 as the Winner of the under 18s category. Ruben Chiverton won the 18-25 Category with his film to Alter by Jack Stockman and received £850. Runners up, Erin Avey and Mollie-Louise Scriver, both used Retromania by The Optimists and were each given a year’s membership to Ventnor Arts Club.
