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Maidstone Area Arts Council presents Living Arts by Living People!
Since the distribution of the Summer Events Brochure we have seen the official launch and opening of Maidstone Music and the Hazlitt Arts Centre ~ a new ‘Arts Hub’ for the Borough located around the Market Buildings. On two recent occasions the Borough Council acted as hosts, and combined being excellent hosts with officialdom and informality. Speeches were made, tributes paid to ‘visionaries’ and ‘motivators’ in Local Government who have pressed for this new Hub to be created, and an opportunity given for young music makers to ‘strut their stuff’ in this new venue. The decibels were extremely high on the musical scale, with even the Bloco Fogo Samba Carnival street drummers creating more ‘good vibrations’ on arrival than the Beach Boys! They were simply thrilling. With talent abounding and youthful energy in abundance inside the Centre, no-one can begrudge young music makers taking their chance, and offering some real ‘welly’. Both were wonderful occasions for which we are most grateful. So what next? What is blatantly clear is that there is a new huge opportunity for ‘Maidstone artists’ of all denominations to utilise this facility to find new audiences, new fans and new art lovers. If local art and local artists need raised profiles, then here is a new vehicle to lift us up. Under the capable and hard-working management of Mandy Hare, the new centre can provide for all tastes and flavours of the performing arts such as music and drama, and the visual arts across a range of disciplines. Art in the 21st century has to be inclusive and accessible, innovative and imaginative. Anyone who is creative (and there are so many new forms of expression emerging with new technologies or old pastimes) should now know that this resource is available. Schools, Clubs and organisations Borough-wide should know they have a staging post for their work. The new Arts Centre must become the ‘first choice venue’ for creators everywhere. Thus MAAC’s clarion call is to use it, work the socks off it, push it hard to respond to your needs to the point of overload. Be adventurous, be innovative, be daring. By using it and abusing it (by over-use that is) only then we will find out what it can and can’t do. Book it for events, display your exhibitions, make your music, meet in the lobby space, make your tickets available for concerts around the Borough. To monitor what’s happening, and with access via a PC, log into www.maidstonemusic.co.uk, enter your own events, find out who’s doing what, where and when. We have always felt that the internet was a powerful bugle blower to those enquiring about the arts. Now we have it ~ use it, support it, sound reveille!
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