Menticulture Magazine X Spark! Issue 4
In our regular Menticulture feature spotlighting Chelmsford’s creative youth, each issue we speak to Jaiden Buck-Auld from Spark! Chelmsford’s very own youth culture revolution.
Spark! is a collective of young creatives shaping the city’s future through bold, exciting projects. With big plans in the pipeline, they’re set to make a lasting impact on Chelmsford’s cultural landscape in the months and years ahead…
A lot has happened in recent weeks. The big news has been revealed about the release of the Place Partnership Bid, as we are thrilled to have been awarded £250,000 from ACE (Arts Council of England). A game-changer for the city for sure!
This of course being intended for the three massive projects that Spark! are going to be involved in over the next couple of years.
This includes working with the Museum of Chelmsford, Concrete Canvas and the Science Festival (although we are aiming to work towards delivering a gaming festival in 2026).
In the meantime, we are certainly keeping busy with regular meetings and particularly with the marketing side of things, such as photo shoots and newspaper articles.
Right now, recruitment is still top of the list of priorities, because we need to work on getting more young people involved to evenly delegate numbers for the individual projects.
So far, we have participated in Chelmsford College’s new annual Youth Business event. We were able to speak with the students and get some people to consider joining.
We also attended the recent skills fest at ARU Writtle. This was a fantastically crafted event with the Year 8 students getting involved in all sorts on offer. We were thrilled to have a stall amongst other organisations and be able to share the space.
In late June, some of the Spark! members attended the Essex Pride event and took part in the parade and had a great time being involved.
In other news, we have welcomed some new members to Spark! and we look forward to welcoming a few more members in due course.
We have also begun work with the partners who we are delivering the projects with and have so far had meetings with the Chelmsford Civic Society exploring routes into local heritage, caught up with Candy Joyce in relation to Concrete Canvas as well as had meetings with the Engineering society and Teledyne e2v to discuss routes towards the science festival.
To learn more about what we do at Spark! and to find out about joining us, please visit www.culturechelmsford.org.uk/spark-chelmsford
