New fire innovations to Board appointments

We’re delighted to welcome Dr Beatriz Garcia as our new Chair, taking Walk the Plank into a new era. 

Dr Garcia takes over from the brilliant work done by Chair Shona McCarthy, Chief Executive at Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society. We’d like to extend thanks to Shona from the whole Walk the Plank team.

We’re attending the Event Production Show in London on 1–2 March 2023. Come and visit our stand at E65E – we’re keen to find out about your upcoming plans and discuss how we can help you create outdoor performance and public celebration.

On 2 March 2023, John Wassell, Creative Producer and Co-Founder, will speak on the UNBOXED panel discussion, while Rebecca Whitman, our Green Space Dark Skies Sustainability Manager, will be representing us on the Sustainable Solutions Now panel.

The Stage Directions programme was designed to enable young people in Salford to explore performance through working with artists and arts organisations in both schools and community settings. Walk the Plank offered an opportunity to explore some of the skills needed and some of the art forms used for performance in outdoor settings.

Although impacted by the pandemic in its first two years, the final year included a finale that brought together all the groups around a central idea, the need to fix a wayfaring machine that had lost its way. This video offers an uplifting and joyful few minutes that we recommend you watch to see what happened and its impact on the young people involved – as well as offering a reminder of what summer in Salford can look like as we sit here in the depths of winter!

As we settle into 2023, we thought we’d look back on the magical things we’ve achieved over the last year. Keep an eye out on our Instagram to see the team’s best moments of 2022.

Our team is growing! We want to welcome Rebecca Lee, our new Production Manager, who recently moved to the UK from Singapore, where she worked as Festival Director at the Asian Youth Theatre Festival and freelanced as a Production Manager.

And welcome to Bev Ayre, Senior Producer, who was a Creative Producer for Knowsley’s Borough of Culture 2022 and freelanced as Creative Producer for Culture Liverpool.

That’s the question Lucy Laverty and Luke Davies, our Emerging Creatives, have been asking.

They have been taking the young people of Little Hulton, Salford on a magical journey to unlock their inner glow. Working in CommUNITY each week, different artists led workshops where the young people created their own glow garden, including creations such as winter lanterns and mason jar forest creatures. This culminated in a celebration of the festive season at their annual party.

The programme went down a treat, and we hope that this is the start of a new, yearly tradition of ‘GLOWING’. We’d like to say a big thank you to Emerging Creatives Lucy and Luke, who leave us after their six-month placements, and to wish them all the best for the future.