Village Green Next Generation 2017

VILLAGE GREEN: NEXT GENERATION

For the 5th year, Metal are extending the annual Village Green festival in 2017 to include a day’s activities that are exclusively performed by and for Southend school pupils – in partnership with South Essex College and Southend Borough Council.

Village Green: Next Generation will take place on Friday 7 July from 9.30am until 2.30pm and will take advantage of all the infrastructure that will be in place for Village Green on Saturday. It is a fantastic opportunity for the young people of Southend to showcase their music, film, visual art and performing talents on a full size festival stage, as well as have a chance to try out all kinds of new skills through art, music and performance activities, journalism workshops and much more – through workshops with professional artists.

Everything on the stages will be performed by young people with the occasional help from a few very special guests! The audience will be exclusively young people too – made up from Southend schools – infant, junior and secondary. All schools have been invited with over 4000 young people from 24 schools signed up to take part. The event is FREE to all schools and students who take part.

Metal work with over 10,000 Southend school pupils each year through a wide variety of cultural activities and have a commitment to investing in the cultural talent of the future. We are constantly looking for exciting opportunities for young people to be inspired by the arts – as audience members or as artists themselves. Village Green: Next Generation is a big part of Metal’s portfolio of work with young people in the Borough and beyond.



Here are some of the highlights from this year’s programme of workshops:

Artem at Populis – drawing on Southend’s connection to the water! Working with artist Arooj Khan students pick a colour to represent their local area and paint an ebru-style picture or create marble masterpieces on postcards. 

Atlas Movement Theatre – An introduction to basic stage combat; exploring storytelling through movement with a focus on teamwork; and a fun introduction from dance from all corners of the world!

BBC Essex – Radio Drama Workshops - Join the team from the BBC for the second year running at Next Generation! Learn the tricks of the trade at their purpose built unit and have some dramatic fun! 

New English Ballet – An introduction to the basics of Ballet! The workshop will comprise a short warm up followed by a creative task that will develop into a short choreographed sequence to the Four Seasons. 

Florence Hazard Design – Discover storytelling through costume design. In this practical workshop you will discover how silhouettes, shapes and colour can help tell the story behind who the character is. 

Global Village Stage – working in partnership with Essex Cultural Diversity Project and The WOMAD Foundation, Metal will produce a stage of World music adn dance for young people to enjoy and take part in, featuring artists from Hungry, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Brazil, Columbia and Zanzibar.

Village Green: Next Generation is funded through Metal's fundraising efforts and is provided FREE to all schools and young people taking part.