As I’m sure you can imagine, the pandemic hit us very hard, as all our events were cancelled. During the lockdowns we have spent a lot of time applying for funding to enable us to continue our creative environmental education work. This mammoth fund-raising effort has been very successful, and we are sure that Vegware’s ongoing support and commitment to our work has helped other funders decide to support us too. So from the bottom of our hearts – thank you Vegware!
We are delighted that we are able to perform again, and in August we dusted off our costumes for the first time in over a year and a half! Our Unusual Tour Guides took people on educational walks along the canal in Falkirk, as part of Falkirk Community Trust’s ‘Canal Encounters’.
This month we have been working with The Scottish Wildlife Trust as part of their Living Landscapes Project, Creating Natural Connections, that is improving the greenspaces in Cumbernauld. Rowanbank has been performing for local school children and community groups encouraging care for the local environment. We also performed at ‘Vogrie Pogrie’, our first festival performance in more than 2 years!
As well as our performance work, since April we have been working in schools again providing outdoor learning workshops to children in Craigmillar, as part of our Positive Imaginings Project. This project uses story-telling and woodland play to enable children to engage with the climate crisis in a positive and empowering way. The children’s ideas for a positive future are being used to inform the development of a new Climate Circus show, that will be performed in November, as COP26 comes to Glasgow. We are currently in development for this show, working with a great team of performers and a children’s theatre director.
I’ll send you some photos in a separate email of our recent Forest Circus show at Vogrie Pogrie – it was lovely to see you in the audience! Feel free to share these photos, but please credit the photographer – our lovely friend Huia.
Having Vegware’s consistent support really helps add weight (and match funding) to our other funding applications, which allow us to take our creative outdoor learning projects to areas of multiple deprivation, and make them accessible to all. Your funding has specifically been used to enable us to rent a wee studio from Out of The Blue in Leith, which is such an inspiring place to work. Thank you so much for your on-going support Vegware!
