Arcade is a Scarborough based charity committed to making cultural, collaborative experiences happen.
Scarborough Stories is a community initiative co-produced by Arcade (@arcade_hello) and The Stephen Joseph Theatre. It is, quite simply, a stonkingly amazing project and you should go and read their information about the project here https://www.hello-arcade.com/scarborough-stories
From Spring 2022 a stack of exciting workshops are being offered – completely free.
I was fortunate enough to attend a Creative Writing workshop led by Shan Barker of Arcade and Allie Watt of the fabulous Beach Hut Theatre Company (@BeachHutTheatre). Participants were encouraged to think about how we individually respond and contribute to Scarborough – however we perceive it. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that responses and feelings had a commonality across the group – there was a lot of love for Scarborough! Individuals wrote poetry and prose about favourite places, sights and sounds. The stories will be shared using the #ScarboroughStories hashtag and collated for inclusion in the project finale later in the summer.
I also had the joy of attending the ‘Explore your story through music’ workshop Led by Rebecca Denniff (@rebeccadenniff). This was always going to be a workshop taking me out of my comfort zone – although I like karaoke as much as the next singing in the shower person, I have zero musical talent. To be honest, at the beginning I did feel a little self-conscious as Rebecca had the group making and creating sounds to go alongside words laid on the floor in a timeline. I could baa like a sheep reasonably well but was significantly less able to voice other images of Scarborough – fortunately, there were a lot of very creative people in the room who could! Rebecca had us all creating sounds and soundscapes in no time and eventually, we actually came up with an entire (folk) song about Scarborough. It was like magic and great fun.
I hadn’t intended to go to any more workshops but they are so excellent I had to sign up for another being led by Jayne Shipley (@jaynewriting) – a textile artist who will be drawing on the history of sail and seaside to lead us towards new stories. I can’t wait.
The series of workshops are all listed https://www.hello-arcade.com/scarborough-stories and there are still places in future workshops for Jaynes textile workshop, song writing and photography. You’d be mad not to sign up!
If you have a Scarborough Story – of beach, donkeys, ice cream, the Castle, swimming, the beach huts, the pathways, the alleys, the amusements, the parks, the people, the theatres – whatever, do share it either via the portal at the above link or via social media using the hashtag #scarboroughstories.
Collated stories are going to be celebrated at the big finale taking place around Scarborough early in July. I am sure it will be a magnificent event!
Thanks to ‘My life through a lens’ for ‘together we create’; Clark Tibbs for ‘do something great’ and Gonzalo Facello for the Scarborough images via Unsplash. Much appreciate your work guys!
LF Meleyal 