Young Arts

About Young Arts

Started in 1973, Young Arts provides exciting opportunities for children and young people to expand their horizons through their involvement in creative arts activities.
We aim to inspire young people with a lasting enthusiasm for the arts and an awareness of our arts heritage and its conservation. Our vision is equality of opportunity for all to learn through participation in the arts.
Young Arts Projects are arts related activities for young people funded wholly or partly by The Arts Society Samlesbury.

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Children’s Art Week – 9th – 17th June, 2018

We are very pleased to once again be involved with Children’s Art Week and this year we are supporting three schools.  St. Oswald’s, who participated last year, are to work on producing a living willow sculpture for the school yard.  Peel Primary School in Accrington, who are a rights respecting school will launch a competition for all the children in school to design a sign representing the right they feel is the most important to them.  A community artist, Cath Ford, will then produce large scale signs on canvas that the children and parents can paint.  Once they are completed she will produce photoshopped images which can be made into signs to display in the playground as a lasting legacy for the pupils.  Large canvas prints will be displayed inside the school.

Balderstone Primary are intending to produce a willow sculpture linked with Blackburn diocese, which will be made into a frieze and displayed in school.

Children’s Art Week – 14th June, 2017

For our Young Arts project this year, we are very happy to get involved with Children’s Art Week, which is designed to encourage children to engage with the visual arts.  Last year more than 13,000 children, young people and adults took part in 95 events across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

We provided funding for artist Ursula Daze to attend St. Oswald’s Catholic Primary School, Coppull to present wet felt making workshops to 3 junior classes aged 7 -11 years.  Each class produced a wall hanging using coloured wool, warm soapy water and lots of friction.  It was a really “hands on” experience for the children and they loved it.  The 3 pieces will be put together and displayed in the school.  Below are some photographs of the day:-

Past Projects

Helmshore textile mill

To celebrate our 40th anniversary in 2014, we launched a new annual Textile Artist Award to support an emerging Lancashire based textile artist to develop and launch their career.  In partnership with Lancashire County Council and with matched funding from the Arts Council, England, we selected Emma Blackburn and then Helen Draper to benefit from this Award.  They both used a studio provided for them at Helmshore Textile Mill and both benefited greatly from the opportunity.

Huncoat Station

In 2012/13 we were involved in a project to enhance a railway halt near Accrington, called Huncoat. Network Rail was involved and they had approached artist Alastair Nicholson to work with the children of Huncoat Primary School to provide artwork for the station. A local group of volunteers had already been improving the environs of the station with new planters of flowers. However, funding was needed and fortunately we were able to assist through an application to the Patricia Fay Memorial Fund at NADFAS, matched by our own resources.

The children produced pictures of flowers which were animated by the artist for the station signage, and then worked on clay models to reflect the area’s industrial past. They then visited (by train) a modern foundry with these models and saw them cast in metal. These will then be displayed like a frieze along the top of the waiting shelters. The children (pictured here)were excited about the project which took them out of their usual literacy and numeracy lessons. It connected them with the past of the area (Accrington brick works, coal mines, foundries) and also gave them a sense of ownership of this station, which has been prone to vandalism in the past. Network Rail’s involvement means that they also got an important message about safety on the railways. So, all in all, it felt like a win-win project and one with which we were very pleased to be involved.

Image by Simon Clarke