"We were founded in 1988 by Liz Buckler and Chrys Blanchard. Both inspirational creative individuals, Chrys and Liz were looking for activities for their own young children to help them explore and develop their creative talents. Since there was little available in the area, they started up Arts Alive to fill the gap.

Arts Alive still provides children's creative workshops during the school holidays which give children the opportunity to work with artists with a wide variety of materials. We also run weekly art groups for toddlers, an after school club for primary aged children and a number of stand-alone projects for other age groups. For example, this summer (2005) Arts Alive hosted a week of circus skills workshops for teenagers run by Cardiff based NoFit State Circus.

For adults, we run monthly life-drawing classes from our converted school building and a number of creative community projects. Over the past 2 years, we have run a stitching project to create a map of Crickhowell's High Street, 'the High Street Stitch Up'. This textile project is unique.

Each building has been created by a different individual and over 50 stitchers have contributed to the finished works. Side one is complete and we are working on side 2 at the moment. Tied into this, local writer Graham Hartill is running an oral history project recording people's stories of the High Street. We hope eventually to publish these stories along with images of the High Street.

Our training programme for artists who would like to work in a comunity setting is suitable for both aspiring and established community artists and we provide tailor made training for teaching staff on art , DT and play. We also act as an agency for community artists . We can provide creative activities in a variety of settings and undertake outreach work for schools, residential activity centres, theatres and during the summer months for festivals and event such as Abergavenny food festival.

Having operated through volunteer work, since 2003 Arts Alive has been able to employ staff following a successful grant bid to the Brecon Beacons National Park. This has enabled us to expand and develop our work. We have two part-time employees. I'm the Development Co-ordinator, organising the programme and running the building. I'm assisted by Jackie Motley our administrator. Between us we try to provide a daily presence at the building. Liz Buckler still works closely with Arts Alive and is developing the training programme for artists working in schools and the community. Artist Tim Rossiter also works closely with Arts Alive and undertook the role of Festival Director this year.

We send out our programme of events each term to our mailing list - we can send by snail mail or email. Contact us to add your name to the list. Ring us, email us or visit our website to find out more. We welcome anyone to join in with our community projects. There is always something happening in the building on Brecon Road - we rent out our space to other users who currently can offer opportunities to try yoga, tai chi, tango, weaving and spinning.

This year, we staged our own festival for the first time. Dragon Gateway Festival ran for nine days at the end of June/beginning of July and was a celebration of arts in the widest sense. It included theatre performance, poetry, an evening of rock bands, illustrated talks and presentations, exhibitions and a grand festival day with a festival procession and a live open-air theatre performance with Crickhowell's own giant puppet dragon. The festival was a big success and we hope to build this into an annual or biennial event for Crickhowell.

Our plans for 2005/06 are still under development and our autumn programme will be published at the beginning of September but we expect to provide plenty of fun including a 'Big Draw' event in October.

Hopefully, the programme will include some taster sessions to allow everyone to try out something new."

Article by Justine Wheatley from Arts Alive.