This year’s Jubilant! theme: Roots

In its fourth year, Jubilant! struck again with the theme Roots.

Over 300 children and young people from 10 local schools and one home education group worked with a creative practitioner to create unique, arts-based projects inspired by this year’s theme. Their work was shared across Stowmarket’s main cultural venues, transforming the town into a free mini youth arts festival for the whole community.

The festival launched with a special event in Stowmarket Market Place — a chance for everyone involved to come together, celebrate the town, and applaud the students’ creativity and achievements.

In 2022, Stowmarket Culture Group launched the very first year of Jubilant!, a creative programme bringing together local schools and professional artists.

Creative practitioners from a wide range of art forms were invited to work directly with students, leading to the creation of original cultural activities. These projects were then showcased to the public at venues across town during a mini youth festival in June.

Over several weeks in June 2023, a specially commissioned team of talented artists worked with students from ten local schools to develop their own exciting creative projects.

Each Jubilant! creation was unique, inspired by the 2023 Festival theme: Tomorrow. The results included one-off performances, exhibitions, audio experiences, and short films — all bursting with imagination and originality.

Each project was showcased at a cultural venue in Stowmarket town centre during Festival week, transforming the town into a celebration of creativity and youth.

Click here to find out more about Jubilant!

This year’s Jubilant! theme: ‘What I Ate For Lunch’.

The project involved a creative practitioner working with groups of primary and secondary school students to help them develop skills and to get them and their families more involved with their local venues. This year’s programme focused on photography. Students worked alongside a photographic practitioner to learn photography skills and capture images of school lunches, including meals bought at school, packed lunches, or food purchased off site. The photographs were displayed in venues around Stowmarket town centre for a week, with there being an open venue launch day on 14^th June where students explored the local cultural scene and viewed their work. Selected photographs will also be featured in an exhibition on school dinners at the Food Museum, scheduled to open next year.

To get a closer look at the students’ photography skills and the creative process behind this project, take a look at the video below. You’ll see highlights from the open venue launch day and hear from the students themselves about their experiences.

Using the theme of ‘tomorrow’ as a brainstorming topic, Freeman Primary’s year five have created an animated poem and a series of animated short stories, some of which can be seen at The Regal cinema.

Led by Becca Gibbs – Film & Theatre Maker

“Transition Into Tomorrow” was a flash mob theatre performance created by Reflex Theatre and Cedars Park Primary pupils, exploring how they feel about change, what they expect to happen in the future and what changes they want to see happen to make a better world.