Top Arts Awards Presented to Local GroupsFIVE awards totaling £2,500 were handed over to the winners of this year’s Arts in the Community scheme at a special ceremony held in the Mayor’s Parlour in Loughborough Town Hall on Friday 16thMarch 2007.

Top Arts Awards Presented to Local GroupsFIVE awards totaling £2,500 were handed over to the winners of this year’s Arts in the Community scheme at a special ceremony held in the Mayor’s Parlour in Loughborough Town Hall last Friday.The Mayor of Charnwood, Coun Ken Pacey, presented the cheques to the happy winners in a competition which always attracts a huge entry. Top prize this year of £750 was won by The People’s Theatre, a newly-formed group which is staging a play based on the 1816 Luddite attack on John Heathcote’s mill in what is now Market Street. There to collect the award on behalf of the group was Andrew McWilliam.The group will perform the play in Queens Park during the Spring Bank Holiday as part of the Heart of Three Cities Festival organized by Charnwood Arts. This year’s awards, the 10^th year that the scheme has been held, was again sponsored by AstraZeneca R&D Charnwood and coordinated by Charnwood Arts.Pat McLean was present to receive an award of £500 on behalf of Charnwood Writers, a group which has for the last 20 years provided support and encouragement for creative writers living and working within Charnwood. Also picking up £500 awards were Ernest Jones for a project which will provide African popular arts workshops including dancing, drumming and singing as part of the Heart of Three Cities Festival and Rawlins Community College, collected by Sharon Scott and Amy Edwards, whose project will also provide workshops during the festival in a range of arts disciplines for both adults and young people.The final award went to Artspace, which, like the Arts in the Community scheme, is also celebrating its 10^th anniversary. Jo Sheppard who collected the £250 award said the Artspace project will provide participatory workshops in the Picnic in the Park event.All entrants were extremely good and once again it had proved hard to select the eventual winners. It all showed just how rich Charnwood’s arts scene is, with so many theatre, dance, music, writers, artists, arts and other groups in the area, she said. This vibrant arts heritage was typified by the quality of those many groups and individuals who had entered for this year’s awards competition.