Village Halls Week: Marsden Mechanics

This village halls week we talks to Jonny Kelly, the marketing and developments officer at Marsden Mechanics village hall. He discusses the different types of events and shows the hall has been the venue for and gives inspiration for other halls considering hosting similar activities.

Transcript

Welcome to Village Halls Week, where I'm speaking to Johnny, Kelly development and marketing manager at Marsden mechanics village hall. Jonny's here to tell me about the different cultural activities that they've been putting on at Marsden mechanics and how you in your village hall can do similar things. 

Yeah, Master mechanics is kind of rooted in locality and the geography of the sort of landscape. It was, I think, it was 1860 it was built and it was built for the people working in the factories. We've got two mills here and sort of the way to for them to get an education basically and then the building was run by Kirklees' Council and then recently, it's been taken over by the Marsden Community Trust, they now run the building and we host Mikron Theater Company here who are an MPO theatre company and who travel by narrow boat. And so they've got an office here and they do auditions here. They do their opening nights here as well, which is always an amazing event for everyone. 
 We also have Marsden jazz festival here, which I think I'm right in saying, is the UK's largest Jazz Festival. And they have an office here. Again, they use our main space to program events and we help the organisation of that. So we're more of a hub for the community and for arts organisations in and around Marsden and Kirklees. So we don't necessarily have, the germs of what an idea is and follow them through, but we do we use our resources to help local artists. and local Arts organisations.

However, the future of the mechanics lies in our own programming So we're not only going to be playing host to Arts organizations. We are also going to be producing things ourselves. So at the moment our programming had sort of two strands which is our activities, so we have people coming in and using the building for the things like yoga or art classes or poetry classes.

And then we have events that we programme for instance, cover bands, and visiting theatre companies. So we're really ranking up that side of the programming. We're getting lots of more people in over the next couple of months. And we are also developing our own, participatory arts stranded of programming, so we'll be doing things like reminiscence theatre or different types of community theatre projects. We're announcing it all as seasons now moving forwards. So we're going to be announcing our Summer season in June, July and August, which will have a programme of events activities and participatory arts, as well as playing host to all of the artistic endeavours from local arts organisations. So that's sort of yeah where we are moving forwards.

That's so interesting. So many different things going on there. Do you think that that appeals to different areas of the community, all the different types of shows that are put on? 

Yeah, so, Marsden's a brilliant place because it's such a small small, little town and, well it's a large village really, but it's got one of the most vibrant artistic identities that I've ever seen really and that's what the mechanics is. It's geographically right in the heart of the village and I think metaphorically it's right in the heart of the village as well because it's that Community Hub that everybody uses.  

Do you have any knowledge about what happened with all the shows and performances during covid? I know theatre as a whole was hit pretty hard by covid?

Yeah, I know that the mechanics essentially just shut down it in, especially in the first lockdown, obviously and then, subsequent lockdowns and then in between. I think it was quite hard to programme and so been booking, shows got almost impossible because people just weren't touring shows. It's all strands of arts, performing arts had to had to come to a bit of a holt but it feels like it's starting to pick up again now, so I think the future is looking pretty bright.

Yeah. I can see you've got a lot of things coming in. You said, as well, you've got your summer productions, shows, musicals, everything lined up to come out later this year.

Yeah, we've got a programme of them: theatre, dance, circus, music. A whole eclectic mix of arts, will be on offer.

Would you have any advice for any Halls that want to have more shows and be similar to you guys? Be a hub for the community and to be the place that showcases all these different cultural things going on?

Yeah, I think in this day and ages it's even easier to go about being able to put on events. You can go on to ticket and selling websites and it's actually relatively easy to put the infrastructure in place needed to be able to play host to artists that are touring. Also, it's just about communication as well as just reaching out. People want to see art and are plenty of artists offering it and so to be that person that brings the two of those things together is really rewarding and also, not as difficult as it might once have been. 

Yeah, that does sound good.

We are planning a big Jubilee event, which is coinciding with the announcement of our first ever season our Summer season, and it's a community arts event. So every single art form that you can think of music dance, theatre, visual arts, poetry. It's all coming together. We're inviting everybody from The local community: Marsden, Colne Valley and Kirklees. Lots of different diverse groups to come and share their artistic endeavours and to celebrate, not just the Jubilee, but the beauty in the diversity of the Commonwealth, as well, and to explore what that means to modern-day constituents and to have a celebration really, which is what it's all about. So we're doing that, in June.

That sounds real exciting. What date is that?

That's the first week of June.