Great Yarmouth Arts Festival

Great Yarmouth Arts Festival Parade 2017- ‘Great Yarmouth Rhythms’

This year Great Yarmouth’s ‘National Art & Design Saturday Club’ created these fantastically colourful flags for the carnival parade! The Club is run as a partnership between East Coast College and Time & Tide Museum through the Creative Collisions network.

Tin House Arts were able to give tutors from East Coast College a session in flag-making and reverse applique using rip stop nylon. Tutors then ran sessions over a few weeks with Club members to produce the flags, helped by the ‘Stitchers’ volunteer group from the museum when it came down to the sewing!

The theme this year was ‘Great Yarmouth Rhythms’ and wanted to encompass and showcase the varied communities and vibrant cultures we have living and working in this town. Ideas and starting points also came from a series of stones which are present outside the library which mention many stereotypical aspects of the seaside town. This mixed with samba bands, Zumba dancers and amazing costumes made for a brightly coloured spectacle which danced, sang and wound its way through the town!

Great Yarmouth Arts Festival Parade 2016- ‘Halfway to Paradise’

Creative Collisions Youth Arts Network worked with professional puppet makers Tinhouse Arts to create giant puppets of rock ‘n’ roll stars. Twenty six young people made four metre high puppets of Dusty Springfield and Buddy Holly as well as The Beatles in a Yellow Submarine, a Rock ‘n’ roll band and Harry Hammonds camera!

The puppets were inspired by Halfway to Paradise the summer exhibition at Time at Tide Museum which celebrates the lively music scene in Great Yarmouth in 1960’s.

Great Yarmouth Arts Festival adopted and extended the same theme for its 2016 carnival parade. The parade celebrated the multi-cultural communities who live and work in Great Yarmouth and explored the notion that we are all attempting to travel towards our own idea of paradise and that our ideas are as diverse as we are.

Four hundred people created puppets, floats & costumes and they danced and sang along with a specially formed Samba Band. The sun shone and thousands came to enjoy the spectacle.

Constructing ‘Halfway to Paradise’ Puppets

We’ve been working with Tinhouse Arts to create giant articulated puppets of rock ‘n’ roll stars for Great Yarmouth Arts Festival Parade on June 4^th 2016. Twenty six students have made four metre high articulated puppets of Dusty Springfield and Buddy Holly as well The Beatles in the Yellow Submarine, a rock ‘n’ roll band with guitars and drum kit and Harry Hammonds camera! The puppets have been inspired by Halfway to Paradise the summer exhibition at Time at Tide Museum which celebrates the lively music scene in Great Yarmouth in 1960’s. Creative Collisions has also been working with looked after young people from Virtual Schools during the Easter Holidays to create giant musical instruments for the parade. They said ‘Thank you, I love it!’ and ‘The best part was getting the finished result and making it and making new friends’. We are really excited to be taking part again this year, the students have created amazing puppets and the parade promises to be more spectacular than ever’. Here are some taster photos, join us for the parade, which starts at Marine Parade at 11am on June 4^th!