Exhibition

Exhibition of Dan Dare comics and memorabilia provided by the Atkinson Museum. This was exhibited in one of our shop windows during the Festival and featured comics, annuals, games, toys and a large bronze bust of Dan Dare. This was a wonderful way of including older members of our community in our festival.

Family Fun Day - The Past

The first community event was themed in the past and included volunteers from the steam punk community; a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Bang Trike; a Steampunk rocket car; a sit in Dalek and of course our Time Machine. We had performances from Professor Elemental; a steam punk rap artist; tea duelling; craft workshops; story workshops and interviews with authors including Frank Cottrell Boyce. There was also an interview with Sophia Cole a 13-year-old author

Family Fun Day - The Future

The second family fun day had a future theme and included a planetarium dome; a VR experience; robot dress up competition; poetry and illustration workshops; craft workshops and performances from Titan the Robot.

Golden Ticket Holders

Thanks to the Siobhan Dowd trust we were able to purchase 3000 new books to gift to children. We did this by creating a golden ticket scheme where schools were each given 100 tickets to distribute to children who may not otherwise get the opportunity to have a free book. A special bookcase was set up from which children could come and claim their free book and have their golden ticket punched. Free bookmarks were also donated by ‘The Works’.

Time Machine

During lockdown we had also been successful in gaining funding from the Arts council to run an online competition for children to write their own stories. Entries had to tell a tale about our main characters, Mary Kingsley&Co and Professor Cyril and how they escaped the restrictions of lockdown in a time machine by going to the past, present or future where there was no Covid. 6 winners received amazon vouchers and we commissioned the stories to be made into cartoons illustrated by Baz Sellers

Exhibition

Giant paper doll clothes. The dolls clothes were created by a Ykids group of teens who also explored the history of fashion. The exhibition was the culmination of a 10-week programme had a story theme and were exhibited in an empty shop unit.

Horrid History Map

During the pandemic we successfully gained funding from the Heritage lottery to create an interactive Horrid History map of Bootle. The map featured a key and QR codes which took users to hidden web pages which offered fun facts, photos, artwork and short historical films made by children. Each school was given 100 maps and the map was launched at the first family fun day.

Contributors

Workshops used different artforms including: - Drama – with Altru Theatre Company - Spoken word with Levi Tafari - Story Writing with Daniel Riding - Writing raps with Professor Elemental and Jamie Broad - Liverpool History with Arts Groupie and meeting Kitty Wilkinson - Poetry and art with Ali Harwood - Meet an explorer with Alice Morrison - And multimedia with Curtis Jobling

The Steam Punk Community

Frank Cottrell-Boyce

Jamie Broad

Sophia Cole

A 13 yr old new author who took part in a live Q&A session and book signing

Professor Elemental

Altru Drama Co

Ali Harwood

Charles Lea

Rebecca Fan-Blinston

Natalie Reeves Billing

Jude Lennon

Daniel Riding

Alan Gibbons

Alice Hunter Morrison

Levi Tafari

Curtis Jobling

Susanne T Schroder

Emma Sandford

Nick Jones