So the New Year is upon us and we are already knee deep in new projects. February sees our next Winter Warmer for the First Art project, with Deirdre and Dale descending on Mansfield to meet the ‘creatives’ (awful word) of the town and spawn a frenzy of artistic activity (and with the news that Bolsover Model Village has received a massive HLF grant who know – maybe our Bolsover Bingo will be making an unscheduled comeback across the town?)

We are also now involved in the Night of the Zeppelin project with Loughborough College, Charnwood Arts and Chorus Theatre which will culminate over the weekend of May 14th and 15th in a unique performance project that will tell the story of how, in 1916, Loughborough was caught up in the largest inland zeppelin attack in the U.K. and in doing so became one of the first towns or cities to witness what was soon to become the most devastating and indiscriminate weapon of warfare – aerial bombardment.

We already have a number of community groups who are working with us on this exciting project but we are now looking to recruit a community troupe who will play a major part in the weekend long performance. This troupe will be a roving one, performing short scenes in a wide range of unusual and evocative locations at various times during the day before being part of the performance finale on the Saturday and Sunday evenings.

This will be a chance to perform in some utterly unique spaces – barbershops, cinemas, hospital beds, railway carriages, canal barges – sometimes telling stories to an audience of one; and sometimes being part of full scale spectacular group scenes.

We will start work in earnest in March and rehearsals will be worked around your availability. If you want to take part but can’t commit to the whole performance weekend or much rehearsal in advance there is still be a place for you.

This is a fantastic opportunity to get involved in what should be a fascinating, energetic and captivating exploration of one of the most interesting stories of the First World War on home soil. And we welcome anyone who would like to join us in this endeavour. All we need from you is a willingness to become part of a group of people who will work together to bring a moment of local history to life in the most imaginative and engaging way possible.

The first meeting about the role of the community troupe in this project will be held at the Organ Grinder on Woodgate in Loughborough on Monday January 18th at 7pm. If you would like to know more about this meeting, or the project, then please email andy@excavate.org.uk

After a fitful start we’re hoping to get stuck into the research for our In Flux project, looking at the experiences of recent arrivals to Nottingham following their relocation caused by wars in the Middle East; and hope to have more news about that soon.

In July we will be producing a promenade performance for the Love Parks week, as a key part of Phase Two of the University of Nottingham’s AHRC funded Green Spaces project, examining the social history of a number of parks across the city.

And we’re really excited to be able to finally announce that we will be working with the wonderful 5ekwartier from the Netherlands on a new project that will take place in and around Creswell Model Village. This project is very much at its planning stage but at the moment its looking like we will be setting up camp on the village green for a week and running a host of activities whilst we are there.

So … plenty to be getting on with. And with ideas bubbling away around conscientious objectors and night time working it looks like it will be another busy year.