Street Reach were the chosen charity partner for the Boomtown 2017 event. Our partnership meant that Street Reach would be the beneficiary of donations made through ticket sales.  We also worked jointly with Boomtown to offer young people a number of opportunities to engage with the arts.  In July, young people working with Street Reach attended a day of free workshops held at Winchester Discovery Centre where participants took part in a music production workshop and helped make costumes for the Boomtown Carnival Parade.

We then took a group of young people to Boomtown on the Saturday, where participants helped man the Street Reach stall and went on a backstage tour. Here, we were given access to places such as the artists’ area and the Event Control room.  This was a unique opportunity for the group to gain an understanding of what is required to put on a large-scale festival.

We had a Street Reach stand in the family area called Whistlers Green, which was our base for the course of the festival. Our backstage tour involved being guided around the full site, and the young people received talks from various event staff that had specialist roles within the festival. The young people had time to take part in a number of the workshops on offer and they especially enjoyed trying out the woodwork activity in the ‘Rusty Workshop’. One of our young people even dyed his hair for the occasion!