Escape Arts Cinema

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On Friday 11th November, Escape Arts celebrated our 25th birthday with an extraordinary exhibition and Escapeorium Ball at Stratford Town Hall. It was a night to remember!

Phew! What a year it has been! So much done and where do we start to recount? Thankfully this video should give a colourful round up of all we have been able to achieve for our 25th Anniversary! A massive thank you to all our staff, participants, volunteers, affiliate organisations and partners and, of course, YOU for making 2022 such a wonderful year. We can't wait to see you in 2023!

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In June 2022, we were delighted to be commissioned by Stratford BID to deliver four days of community activities as part of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. We spent the weekend delivering activities with families in our Escape Arts van making crowns and corgis and for one day only, we opened up our Youth & Community Studio to showcase an exhibition of artefacts from the last 70 years and host a truly incredible Jubilee Jukebox concert, performed by Orchestra of the Swan. Also on display was our Jubilee Cloak, created with Artist Barbara Fideo and members of our community groups. The weekend was quite simply magical!

A collaboration between Escape Arts and poet Rob Gee, highlighting and regaling some experiences and memories captured over the years. This video was created by Escape Art's Digital Content Apprentice, Liam Alexandru. Live & Local LivingRoom, created as a response to Covid-19, pairs communities with professional artists to work on creative projects together. The initiative aims to reduce isolation by engaging people in arts and creative activities and this particular project was supported by Arts Council England and Stratford-on-Avon District Council.

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Between 2021 and 2022, we ran our Supporting Talent programme, teaching and mentoring a variety of people with new digital and creative films, culminating in this final piece. We hope you enjoy it. A massive thank you to Jay Langdell for his great teachings and for filming and editing this great piece.

In August 2021, we were delighted to present our Plastic Planet Exhibition in the former Debenhams windows in Bell Court, Stratford-upon-Avon. The exhibition was created by Artist Ros Ingram with 9 local schools who each created an endangered animal using recycled materials. The installation explores how we use and can reuse everyday materials, culminating in a giant landscape of creative work that contains themes of hope and inspiration for the future protection of our planet.

In July 2021, Escape Arts took part in the Warwick and Monash University TeaMWork International Internship, where we tasked seven interns from around the globe with creating inspirational and educational resources for schools around the subject of climate change as part of the Escape Arts Project, Plastic Planet. This work was presented in an online conference on 23rd July, watch and enjoy the overwhelmingly positive reaction to their impactful and inspirational work.

On 19^th March 2020, Escape Arts closed its doors for what we thought would only be a few weeks, after the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown. We had to transform our services overnight to continue to support our communities online and this video captures our response and projects during this time. During the pandemic, we produced some fantastic creative resources online that are still available to do from home.

When we moved into the Escape Arts & Heritage Centre in 2015, we were interested in finding out more about its history. Our Volunteer Researchers visited the archives at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and were blown away to find out our building had a rich history dating back 500 years and had once been a Tudor pub, a flax-dressers and home to a whole host of professions before becoming a shop and slaughterhouse in the 1800s. This video, captured using a 360 degree camera and viewable using a VR headset, captures the history of our site, from Hensons Butchers, to our Tudor pub, The Crowne.

When we moved into the Escape Arts & Heritage Centre in 2015, we were interested in finding out more about its history. Our Volunteer Researchers visited the archives at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and were blown away to find out our building had a rich history dating back 500 years and had once been a Tudor pub, a flax-dressers and home to a whole host of professions before becoming a shop and slaughterhouse in the 1800s. In this film, meet Mark, a former butcher at Hensons who will tell you all about the butcher shop!

When we moved into the Escape Arts & Heritage Centre in 2015, we were interested in finding out more about its history. Our Volunteer Researchers visited the archives at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and were blown away to find out our building had a rich history dating back 500 years and had once been a Tudor pub, a flax-dressers and home to a whole host of professions before becoming a shop and slaughterhouse in the 1800s. In this film, meet Nathaniel Cooper, who operated a Flax-dressers business on our site between 1792 to 1832.

When we moved into the Escape Arts & Heritage Centre in 2015, we were interested in finding out more about its history. Our Volunteer Researchers visited the archives at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and were blown away to find out our building had a rich history dating back 500 years and had once been a Tudor pub, a flax-dressers and home to a whole host of professions before becoming a shop and slaughterhouse in the 1800s.

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In this film, meet Richard Spooner, who was the Landlord of The Crowne Pub, which operated on our premises from 1521 to 1671. Fun fact: the pub changed its name to The Wheatsheaf during the English Civil War, just in case they were accused of taking sides!

Did you know that our VIP group was born out of Escape Arts' 2014 project with Youth Volunteer Bill Jones? In 70 Years On: D-Day Remembered, Bill interviewed twelve D-Day Veterans and produced a short film documenting their experiences.

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The film was incredibly well received in Stratford; Bill received a Pride of Stratford Award for his achievements and led to our veterans being awarded their Legion d'Honneur medals in a ceremony at Stratford Town Hall. Our VIP group still meets today on the third Thursday of every month at Stratford Town Football Club.

Oral history of life in the 60's in Stratford upon Avon by Escape Arts and The Old Slaughterhouse Arts & Heritage Studio, compiled by Anne Forgan.

Watch Artist in Residence Rachel Higgins delivering her iconic sculpture to Escape Arts’ Grade II Listed Arts & Heritage Centre in Stratford-upon-Avon, funded by the Arts Council. This popular sculpture encapsulates a piece of our building’s history as a turn of the century butchers on Bridge Street, run by generations of the Henson’s family.

In 2015, Escape Arts transformed a derelict former slaughterhouse into a vibrant community hub, The Escape Arts & Heritage Centre, which is now our charity home. We were keen to explore local memories of our new home, which had once been the slaughterhouse at the rear of the butchers & popular pie shop, Hensons. We found that Hensons had remained in the memories of lots of local people in Stratford, which we captured in this short heritage film.

From 2012-2015, Escape Arts worked on a Children in Need funded project to enable young people to get involved in music development work. Our young people have written and produced a Children in Need single ‘Wake Up The Moon’ to help raise funds for BBC Children in Need. A huge thank you to all the musicians involved with this project and to the musical director Simon Kemp and Paul Johnston at Rhythm Studios.

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For over 25 years, Escape Arts has delivered high impact arts projects to communities around Warwickshire, demonstrating a clear link between health and participatory arts. Filmed in 2011, this film captures our journey and the impact of arts & health on our beneficiaries, our team and our community network.

In 2009 Escape was awarded nearly quarter of a million pounds to develop its Tuned-In for Play project across Warwickshire fusing innovation, technology and creativity to provide exciting new work with children, families and young people. See the results and find out more about this impactful project.