For the first time ever the BCT Youth group were part of the brilliant Stockton International Riverside Festival Parade. It was an amazing experience for all and led to the re-introduction of our Arts & Crafts style youth sessions which proved a success.
Our busy summer has continued following on from our “Schools Out” show and the much enjoyed first ever camping trip, with a busy few weeks as we prepared for our SIRF debut. The theme this year was instant light, based around one of Stockton’s most famous son’s John W
alker, who invented the match. After sadly having to put a stop to our brilliant arts session two years ago, this gave us the opportunity to get the creative juices flowing and make some mess.
With a short deadline of only a couple of weeks, we decided to add two additional arts sessions to help the children make their own costumes for the carnival. This was as well as working with the music team within the usual sessions to create some music to accompany our march down the high street.
The usual team were pleased to have the support of our recently started Friends of BCT group, including parents and supporters of our work. This made a massive difference to what we could hope to achieve in a very short time scale.
During the first planning sessions the children definitely had their thinking caps on, coming up with some great ideas, such as fire flamed skirts and capes, giant matches and matchboxes as well as masks with Facepainting too. With the support of everyone we managed to cobble together the necessary supplies to then get messy with some paint.
On the music side after the group had tried numerous songs fitting with the theme, we hit on the gospel church classic “This little light of mine”. This was overheard being sang by Gary Doyle parent of Cassie & Jake who had kindly agreed to help the group prepare for this performance. In a true BCT style the kids soon got into it, even if passers-by outside the Synthonia Club were bewildered as to what this funny little group was up to marching up and down.
The event also gave the group the chance to wear their new BCT t-shirts for the first time, kindly designed and made by Cushtee T-Shirts.
On the day we all met at the Municipal Car Park ready to get faces painted and costumes on for the big performance. It was great to be in the company of the many different youth groups from around the borough and to see friends who were also taking part. During the parade the group sung and danced all the way, many leaving themselves hoarse by the end of it. But all the way round it was clear to see by the people watching that we were certainly making some noise and spreading some of our very own brand of BCT joy.
Once the parade was over it was time to get our dinner, courtesy of Dawn & Tony, parents of Ryan who had put together a brilliant picnic. It was clear at this point that we now had some very tired children. We now however had to get prepared for another performance in one of the gazebos located in the workshop section.
The performance was certainly a test for the group as due to a planning error, we were competing with a large drumming group, even though we only had our acoustic guitars and singing voices. Regardless of the challenge the group continued to sing and play to the best of their ability and definitely drew a bigger crowd than our noisier friends.
You can check out more photos from SIRF at our facebook page:
