2025 is the 40th anniversary of Collage Arts, a momentous year for us as well as our partners in the Haringey Youth Festival who are also all celebrating major birthdays: Jacksons Lane
are celebrating their 50th, Streetz Ahead their 30th and Haringey Shed are 25 years old! Keep your eyes peeled for announcements of various celebrations.
September
We published the full evaluation report for our 2 year programme 'Voices for the Future' embedding creatives into primary schools across the borough, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Teacher Development Fund. We are immensely proud of what we achieved. You can read the report here
Congratulations to Rocio Rodriguez-Inniss who was nominated by staff at Collage Arts to receive the Jack Petchey Outstanding Leader Award. She is a much-loved member of the team, who is always at the heart of the work we do.
October
We started our set of workshops through Haringey Creates’ Creative Conversations initiative, delivering a T-Shirt design and printing training with Haringey Learning Partnership. The students printed great designs with a local postcode theme and set up their own stall at our Christmas fair in December.
Douglas Da Silva returned for Collage Voices to Harris Academy Tottenham where he delivered a set of afro beat dance workshops for Black History month.
November
Last term we took part in the eleventh Haringey Youth Festival where our singing students brought the house down alongside young people from other organisations across the borough. We always love running and participating in this event with partners Jacksons Lane, Haringey Shed and Streetz Ahead.
Collage Arts artistic director Steve Medlin was part of two panel discussions exploring arts in education, firstly, at London Academy of Excellence Tottenham in their festival examining creative pathways into the industry, and then at Haringey Creates’ Education Summit, which both celebrated and challenged current models of arts engagement in education and beyond.
December
The students of Collage Voices kicked off the festive period with a sharing of the term’s work - a wonderful day of joy and creativity and a fine way to finish 2024.
We delivered a community fun day for the Clarendon Trust to the local community. It was a day full of songs, mince pies and mulled wine, enjoyed by many.
Revolution returned in support of Collage Voices, an exciting night of performances by stars of stage and screen. We cannot thank these artists enough for their continued support: Martina Laird, Otis Cameron Carr, Uchenna Ngwe, Yebbz Ashanti, Rocio Rodriguez-Inniss, Kathryn Reed, Dorian Ford, Mao Yamada, Ché Walker, Mo Sesay, Ezra Escobar, Arthur Darvill, Inès De Clerq, Steel Pan Fusion, DJ Dub and UK Soul Legend Omar.
Our online auction helped raise £1,250 for our Saturday Voices programme. Many thanks to all those that donated and all those that put a bid in!
January
We invited secondary schools to bring groups of drama students to our McQueens Theatre to participate in workshops to support their curriculum. Students from Park View Academy enjoyed two workshops in physical theatre and movement. We look forward to welcoming students from other schools in February and March.
And of course, our Saturday classes returned offering sessions across drama, music, singing, and creative writing for year groups from 8yrs - 28yrs. All classes remain at £2.50 with full bursaries available.
As we enter 2025, the challenge of continuing to offer such subsidised classes is becoming ever greater. Whilst there is hope, it still remains that arts in education is vastly underfunded and supporting trusts are overwhelmed with the number of applications. We have to be realistic about what we need to do to survive and hopefully thrive.
As such, we are launching an initiative to receive regular standing order donations from individuals to give us some form of stability across the year. If you would like to donate please click here.
And/or if you would like to help with the publicity of the initiative then please contact voices@collage-arts.org
Check out www.collagevoices.co.uk/donate to learn more.
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