Live dance event to close memorial hall (From Northwich Guardian)

Live dance event to close Northwich Memorial Hall

10:24am Wednesday 13th February 2013 in News By Gina Bebbington

NORTHWICH residents are being urged to celebrate the past and look forward to the future with a live dance event to close Northwich Memorial Hall on Saturday, March 2.

Collect: Live is the culmination of the Collect: Memorial Capture Project, which has seen residents share their memories of the hall through a number of drop in sessions.

Community groups drawn together by Cheshire Dance will perform a promenade community dance across the town centre accompanied by the Air Cadet band, street cleansers and visual and light artists.

This will start at 5pm at Adelaide Gardens, opposite Marks and Spencer, and travel along Leicester Street, through Weaver Square and under the bypass before culminating at the memorial hall for the finale.

Groups include Hot Steppin’, St Wilfrid’s Catholic Primary School, Hartford CE High School and a Cheshire-based boys dance group.

Phil Harding, manager of the hall, said: “Collect: Live is as much about looking forward as looking back and it’s the link that will see us towards the new building.”

Katayoun Dowlatshahi, lead artist for Northwich’s regeneration, said: “It’s a transition rather than a closure and the live event is celebratory.

“It’s painful to go through change and people don’t want to let go of the past and what the memorial hall building represents but it’s now about looking to the future.

“But it’s important to gather memories and reflect those in where you go in the future.”

Katayoun is creating a legacy art work for the new Memorial Court based on all the memories and information about Northwich Memorial Hall.

“The art work should be something that reflects the history and use of the old building so I wanted to come up with a programme that enabled us to find memories and archives to do with the building,” she said.

“It’s about creating a legacy for the future.”

This art work is likely to be a floor scape – a timeline flowing along what will be a ‘main street’ of the new building from Chesterway to the River Dane.

To see the archive of Collect memories or to add to it, visit memorialcaptureproject.blogspot.co.uk.