New Blaze Young Producers look forward to 2012 posted by rachhawthorn

Hi, I’m James Bowling, I’m sixteen and I’m a member of Bluestreak Arts in Preston.  As we all know, 2012 is the year of the Preston Guild, which is held every 20 years. Linking with this historic occasion, Blaze is hosting an ambitious youth led festival in Preston, which will be part of the Preston Guild. The Festival will also mark the end of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, as young people from across the North West take over!

As a new Blaze young producer, I went along to the recent Blaze Youth Forum to see what ideas others my age were planning on doing for Blaze and the Blaze Festival in 2012.  We started with some team building games before having a discussion about our ideas on what we thought should be part of Blaze.  The group from Bluestreak looked at the festival and came up with lots of ideas about what we could do as part of the festival.  For example, we thought that we could create parades, with different groups and acts leading the crowds into the main attractions. We saw some clips on parades with huge shapes, and dancers and actors going through a town centre.  This lead us to think about the history of Preston and incorporate it into our ideas, such as having a huge sheep float.

Last year, one Blaze project that I liked was the Big Game, where members of Sparks and Fusion 1318 youth theatre worked with New York artist Tom Russotti from the Institute of Aesthletics, to create new games, and lots of drama, both on and off the sports ground. This year they look set to go even further with a street game, using theatre and digital media.  The Big Game will be developed in Pennine Lancashire and will then come to Preston for the festival, so young people in Preston will be able to take part.

The festival will not only be showcasing all the exciting work of Blaze but other projects from around the North West. We don’t want to spoil it but I can tell you that Preston is definitely going to be the place to be this year, with a huge variety of culture and art on every corner. It’s all back to ours in 2012!

Image: The Big Game 2011, Heartfelt and Cherished Photography