The Odyssey – Burston Crown

Exciting new project ‘Inn Crowd’ is looking for community pubs to reach the parts other arts cannot reach

For many villages in rural counties such as Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, the local pub is the cornerstone of village life, providing a range of community benefits alongside local brews, food and refreshments. To reinforce the central social role pubs play in rural communities, Arts and Community Development charity Creative Arts East has an exciting new project, ‘Inn Crowd’. Inn Crowd offers pub landlords the opportunity to attract new customers by providing high quality, professional entertainment inspired by the spoken word, and Creative Arts East is on the look-out for community focussed pubs to be part of this exciting venture.

‘Inn Crowd’ was launched earlier this year with funding from Arts Council England, and Creative Arts East and its partners now have a selection of the best spoken-word inspired performances from international artists across the UK, to offer to landlords at a heavily subsidised rate (from £100 – £200). This enables local pubs to give their clients something different, and draw in new visitors. So far results are showing an average increase in takings of 66% on performance nights and the shows have received great feedback from both landlords and audience.

‘Entertaining, educational, superb, bring culture & enjoyment to local venues. Thank you so much.’ Audience member, The Swan, Stratford St. Mary

“These performances are exactly what’s needed in the countryside. Bringing performances such as these into village pubs so that people can have a drink, possibly a meal, and then walk home. It also helps to make the pub more profitable” Landlord, The King’s Head, Diss

Creative Arts East supports pubs through the process from the initial booking to final performance, helping them decide which event will best suit them, their venue and audience, and gives expert advice on how to market the event, also helping to raise the pub’s profile.

Shows coming soon to a pub near you include: BBC Slam Champion and Best Spoken Word award winner Sophia Walker with ‘Around the World in 8 Mistakes’, BBC Radio 4 and Radio Times pick of the day John Osbourne and his show ‘John Peel’s Shed’, and Edinburgh Festival favourite James Rowland and his hit show ‘Team Viking’.

The scheme is unique as it also supports artists to gain valuable insight into rural communities and provides a platform for them to tour their shows to a whole new audience.

For further information on how to get involved with ‘Inn Crowd’ contact Karen Kidman on 01953 713390 or [email protected] and for information on all Creative Arts Events go to: www.creativeartseast.co.uk/whats-on

NOTES

Creative Arts East is an arts and community development charity founded in 1994 with the focus of taking the arts into rural communities. Creative Arts East works throughout Norfolk, Suffolk & the East running Creative Arts East Live! & Village Screen – rural touring schemes for live performance and cinema; and a variety of projects concerned with creative learning, health & wellbeing and volunteer development.

‘INN CROWD’ is a partnership project from Creative Arts East and Applause Rural Touring. With support from artistic partner Writers’ Centre Norwich and New Writing South, rural pubs in the East and South East of England are hosting exciting, high quality performance events influenced by literature and spoken word. Inn Crowd is intended to reinforce pubs as central to rural community life by bringing exceptional cultural experiences to new audiences.

Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. To find out more about the Arts Council visit the What we do section of the website – See more at: What We Do