Me: My Past, My Future

Funded by Derbyshire County Council and The Mighty Creatives, this project aims worked with families in Somercotes to increase the involvement of parents in telling and reading stories with their children.

The project was loosely based on a children’s time slip story ‘Scavenger Boy’, where a boy is taken back in time and learns what life was like in the days of cotton production at Cromford Mills. The families reflected on their past and thought about what they wanted for their children.

The main partners and their key aims were:

The Mighty Creatives
Want to interest more young people in art and culture either as creative or audience.

Derbyshire County Council
Want families to experience creative fun and the spin off family bonding which comes through sharing stories, ultimately to encourage more language and reading at home.

Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site
Want the site to be used by harder to reach groups.

Somercotes Children’s Centre and Infant School
Want to engage with families and create more family and education ‘partnerships’ to best support the children.

To achieve this we are working with three creative artists, Paula Moss (photographer), Matt Black (poet) and Debi Hederwick (dancer) who explored the ‘Me: my past, my future’ theme with up to 30 families between October and Christmas 2014. The families have visited the Derbyshire Records Office, Cromford Mills and Masson Mills and worked on a creative family session at the Youth Club in Somercotes. There was a performance of exhibition at the Mills in Cromford in February 2015.