Creative Commission fund supports innovative ideas

The Octagon & Westlands’ Creative Commission fund has been designed to support new innovative ideas to bring the creative arts to communities across Somerset.  Through the fund we are working with local artists & companies to make different types of cultural activity accessible to audiences & participants across Somerset and the South West.

In April this year, Emma Randall piloted a new Tea Dance with a Twist at Speedwell Hall, Crewkerne where 15 over 55’s took part in a social dance workshop featuring folk dance, disco, jive and ballroom among others.  Tea and delicious cake followed.

Caroline Rees is currently visiting schools, retirement homes and memory cafés across South Somerset with her project, Hire a Ballerina – giving people young and old the opportunity to experience short pieces of ballet repertoire in their own community setting.

Two of Somerset’s theatre companies; Wassail and Little Bulb are creating & presenting new pieces of work. 

Birthday Day, by Wassail is currently on tour to farms and outdoor spaces. It’s a story about family, and about what happens when the secrets that bind us come out.  Three performers bring two sisters and their mum to life telling a story over 80 years. Tickets & dates are avalable on the Wassail Theatre website.

Little Bulb are bringing Listen Dance to Yeovil staging the show at Westlands Entertainment Venue in our very own Ballroom: expect a theatre show that is also a big night out.  Get up on your feet or sit back and enjoy a 10-piece band of musicians inviting the audience to ceilidh, mosh, rave & jive. Tickets are available on the Westlands website.

And looking later into the year, we’re supporting MJ Gardner to bring Their/Yours, a performative workshop for neurodivergent & disabled people, to a Somerset town in August. Before Vic Llewellyn tours his new solo theatre show about dementia & memory loss, told through the form of a ghost story across the South West in the Autumn.

The Creative Commissions fund is part of Somerset Council’s Open Grants programme, which is managed by The Octagon & Westlands’ Arts Engagement & Outreach service.  

“Today was very enjoyable; all the dances, music and company were great!” Tea Dance with a Twist participant

“Elegant, graceful, beautiful” Hire a Ballerina audience

“Very clever, very poignant and captures an important period and emotion in the development of the nation, its attitude towards women and the dilemmas of the time” Birthday Day audience