Tarner Community Project are hosting a ‘Glow Festival’ in Tarner Park on Saturday 26th March, 4-8pm, commissioned through the Creative Communities strand of the ABCD Plan for Cultural Recovery.

The commission looked to promote ‘community-led events development’, supporting an organisation working in partnership with a local community, to deliver creative activity that would contribute to the reopening or revitalisation of a particular neighbourhood as part of the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. The selection panel really felt that Tarner Community Project met the brief. They have a track record of putting on beneficiary-led community cohesion events, working closely with young people and the whole community.  The summer Tarner Festival had grown into a really popular event, but like all communal events, was hugely impacted by the pandemic.

We asked Tom Hines, the project lead, to tell us a bit about what will be going on at the event…

The Tarner Community project is a service embedded in the neighbourhood and runs after school/holiday clubs (ages 4-11) and a range of evening youth sessions (ages 12-19). We work closely with families and alongside local stakeholders such as the adjacent primary school

This youth-led community festival celebrates the end of winter and coming out of the dark, just before the clocks go forward. We’ve programmed attractions that suit a darker time of year, as such, we’ve got lots of neon and fire planned for the park.

We have collaborated with the children and young people we work with, to develop this event alongside our partner arts organisations. Local young people from our youth club sessions have worked alongside Street Artist, Dave Pop, to develop their typography and sign-writing skills, and the younger children from the after school club worked with Same Sky facilitators to create their own lanterns for the day. 

There will be a live music stage (curated and featuring young people from AudioActive) plus the stage will be managed by young people who’re interested in putting on their own events in the future. We have 2 dance performances via Project Female (on behalf of South East Dance) who have been working with young women from Brighton Youth Centre. There will be live mural art from various artists around the park and lit décor around the site (provided by Same Sky). Young People from our project also created some neon letterforms with Tom from Priority 1-54 that will be displayed on the day.

 This event is part of Brighton’s ABCD Cultural Recovery program and we are excited to have connected with so many local artists and projects. We would also like to thank Enjoolata for their support of our events.

 The day will also have fire spectacular performances, food & drink and some interactive UV doodle activities inside a black-out tent.

 We are delighted that recent building work updating the park will be finished and ready to open to the public to coincide with the event.

 Tom Hines