Welcome to the latest LEVEL newsletter!

Marketing superstar required! If you love the arts and fancy sharing the work of Level with different audiences, our Marketing & Audience Development Officer role could be right up your street!

Deadline: 9 October  (9am)

This month we bid farewell to our wonderful Marketing & Audience Development Manager Emma Oaks who is off to work for the Royal National Institute for the Blind. Emma has made a significant contribution to the organisation and will be missed by staff, artists and participants. We would like to wish Emma every success in their new role.

This year, we’re really excited to bring you our first in-person Fun Palaces event running from 11am-3pm on Saturday 7 October at Level centre and Peak Village shopping centre.

Throughout the day we’ve got loads of fantastic free activities for you to get stuck into: make a mini kite, build your own games controller, construct a giant cardboard city or a fetching robot costume (inspired by work from our LEVEL Youth Collective), fashion a tiny terrarium, and much more.

Our new exhibition ‘Water Portals’ will be open on the day too so you can drop in and interact with the microscopic world of water.

If you can’t make it in person, our Fun Palaces event is also online with a workshop where you can learn how to create your own pom-poms, email info@levelcentre.com to book the online session.

Water Portals by Henry Driver is an interactive digital journey exploring the microscopic world of water. Discover the beautiful microbes that live in our rivers, lakes and seas, and understand the crucial roles they play in creating a healthy world. Explore how these important microbes are at risk from climate change, and what simple things we can do to make a difference.

The installation is now open and runs until 5 January 2024. Tickets are free, but please book in advance.

During the pandemic, older people in Derbyshire joined together to make A Necklace of Stars. The wonderful embroideries, poems and lullabies are now touring the county and will be on display from the end of September.

The project celebrates childhood and the night sky in words, song and stitches and is a testimony to the power of human connection and creativity in the face of lockdowns and isolation.

The exhibition features a quilt of embroidered stars alongside a catalogue of poems and lullabies.

GLISTEN Fest was filled with days of sparkly, sensory fun for people with Profound Multiple Learning Disabilities. Our first GLISTEN Fest was designed to spark creativity and create memories that can be shared with family, friends and carers.

The festival included Celestial Sound Cloud by Pif Paf Theatre which was so well received creating a sensory illumination. SEN schools, day centres and individuals from across Derbyshire and beyond visited us across the week. We also had interactive sessions in the Soundplay Dome by Soundplay projects. Alongside this we had a quiet sensory room for anyone needing a break from the action and space for parents and carers to unwind. The wonderful Brew Projects delivered activities including printing workshops.

GLISTEN Fest was made possible with support from Big Give Christmas Challenge 2022 supporters, the People’s Postcode Trust and Derbyshire Freemasons. We want this festival to be an annual event so we will be participating in the Big Give Christmas Challenge to raise funds from 28 November – 5 December 2023. Watch this space for more details.

Designed to be accessible, light floods through the building’s 60 (yes 60!) windows, making this a stunning creative space for visual, digital and performing arts. There’s a Gallery Space, Event Space and Digital space as well as a meeting room, kitchen and art block.