Tuesday 8th December saw the first ever ‘Urbanise’ Festival take place in Bridport. Billed as a ‘celebration of street sports and arts festivals’, the event will be held at the Sir John Colfox School and is part of the RELAYS (Regional Educational Legacy for Arts and Youth Sport) project which seeks to engage young people in the South West in sporting and cultural events in the run up to the London 2012 Games.
“This is the first ‘Urbanise; street sports and arts festival’ and we aim to plan and deliver many more in the lead up to the 2012 Games,’ explains Jo Gardner, RELAYS Cultural
Co-ordinator at AUCB. ‘The organisation and delivery of this event has been supported by young people and is aimed at the youth sporting culture which includes skating, free running, BMXing and the sub-cultures that surround it such as music, dance and graphic art. We hope that this event will inspire and engage many young people in sport and art and help them to see their links.”
The festival will consist of workshops in skate boarding (courtesy of West Dorset’s Mobile Skate Park), BMXing, Street Soccer, Street Dance, DJ-ing, Graffiti and Urban Graphics, supported by Arts University College at Bournemouth (AUCB) and Bournemouth University (BU) students.
Workshops will be running throughout the day and have approximately 100 year 9, 10 and 11 pupils from the Sir John Colfox School taking part. The event will open to the public from 4pm to 6pm to allow for young people from the surrounding area to also take part.
Leading up to the event, pupils at the school have been taking part in street dance workshops in order to open the event with an explosive ceremony. Fashion and Graphics students from the AUCB have also been visiting the school prior to the event to teach the pupils how to design graphics for clothing. The students are sharing their knowledge of contemporary design and during the festival the designs will be transferred onto t-shirts for the young people to take home with them.
Irene Fairley, the SSCO based at Colfox School said ‘The pupils from the school are extremely excited about the event. The range of activities means that the festival is appealing to a wide range of pupils and the fact that it is running after school means that even more pupils can get involved!’
'Most people envisage an athelete running around a track or a swimmer in the pool when you mention the London Games' explains RELAYS Project Director, Leanne Dingle. 'However, the Games are about so much more. Some of these 'new' sports are already events in themselves, such as BMX biking, and who knows when skate boarding will be an Olympic sport? The Games are about engaging everyone, young and old, and inspiring people to participate. We are delighted that Colfax School, Bridport and the students at AUCB have collaborated so enthusiastically for this fantastic event.’
RELAYS (Regional Educational Legacy in Art and Youth Sport) is an exciting programme of festivals and events in the South West. Led by Universities South West, through a network of regional universities and cultural organizations, RELAYS aims to blend youth sport and cultural in a vibrant mixture of activities across the region in the build up to the 2012 Games. It is funded by Legacy Trust UK, an independent charity that has been set up to help build a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the 2012 Olympic Games and HEFCE (The Higher Education Funding Council for England).