10 Years of Neotists

When we presented a quick powerpoint at the St Neots Festival afterparty, many of the people in the room hadn’t a clue that Neotists had done so much over the last 10 years. So we realised that maybe you don’t know the full story of what’s been happening, either! It’s down to the fact that we’re pretty rubbish at self-promotion and always forget to take photos and do promotional posts. So forgive us, and let’s take a look at how we ended up putting on a festival for 12,500 people and where it all began.

2014

It’s funny how a little idea like a colouring-in map of the local parks to entertain our kids over the summer, led us to create Colour My Park, which led us to seek funding to get it printed, which led us to an amazing person who was working on community development in our area at the time, Diane Lane, which led us to where we are now, beginning with our first public event, The Big Draw. There’s far more words about the beginning of Neotists on our website, if you’re so inclined.

 

2015

Another Big Draw, this time in a different location at Riverside and lots of people turned up to make their mark. We also held our very first PechaKucha event at St Neots Rowing Club. The style of presentation is 20 slides each lasting 20 seconds and it can be about anything. We had such a variety of presentations over the years, hosted 12 events with 53 presenters, but because it was about something the speaker was passionate about, it was always interesting! You can listen back to the very first one here.

 

2016

More and more people were keen to present their own  PechaKucha so we carried on. The in-person meetings were something people asked us to do so, just as Bohemia officially opened they kindly allowed us use of their space for a meet up. It’s hard to remember a time before Bohemia came to St Neots!

We also collaborated with Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination to help create Fantastical Eynesbury, which introduced us to artists and creatives from further afield and was a really interesting project.

We started the feature ‘Five Questions For Creatives’ beginning with Max McMurdo.

 

2017

Life Drawing classes continued over in Loves Farm House. A local artist who was working on hugely successful film franchises was looking for a life drawing class to attend. There wasn’t one, so with a little persuading he kindly agreed to run one. No one who attended knew his day job, as he’s a humble and generous guy who wouldn’t want to intimidate anyone from taking part and getting stuck in. I still love that.

We were fortunate enough to be able to access a building for a Christmas pop up shop during the Christmas lights switch on which had arts, crafts, home-made soup and a crackling fire (projected onto the wall courtesy of a projector). So many people came in during the few hours we were open and the buzz and energy and happy faces were a joy. We also raised £100 for Switch Now‘s Christmas do fund.

 

2018

St Neots Film Festival was started by Melina and Ben, and went on to return the following year. A great event giving people a chance to enter their films into a competition and watch them in the cinema with their friends and family.

We started this Neotist newsletter and featured an artist for the header of each one (loved that idea, might return to that). We promoted other members and creative businesses, including workshops by Habby Days and The Shop at Forty, and our local cultural and heritage hub, St Neots Museum.

We held a PopUp free craft event for Chinese New Year in the new Bohemia on the Square building.

Neotists were put forward as key stakeholders for cultural impact in St Neots in the bid for St Neots Future High Street funding.

 

2019

Future Takeover was something that came from a collaboration with Collusion which was to explore the potential future for St Neots, to share ideas and to hear from residents and capture their ideas. Collusion returned again in 2023 to run an AI Workshop.

We set up Neotists as a Community Interest Company and continued to help promote other offerings going on in St Neots. We were part of ‘Making an Exhibition of Oneself’ at Loves Farm House.

We hosted more PechaKucha evenings and planning for a festival next summer was afoot! Ooh! Exciting! Nothing can get in our way, bring on 2020!

 

2020

As we planned to hold an exhibition from Cold War Steve, suddenly things came to a grinding halt. We sent out a couple of emails, but our energy went quickly into St Neots Community Support and trying to stay connected with people with things like pumpkin trails or Christmas lights trails.

St Neots Town Council wanted to collaborate with us to enhance the offering for the Farm & Craft Market and add some music and entertainment to the square. Market Marvels was born.

 

2021

The Railway Bridge Project was completed with Neotist Carli Hall creating a 47 metre mural which spans the railway bridge and features as many buildings in St Neots as she could possibly squeeze in. If you look closely you’ll spot a few of us in the piece. Parts of the mural have also be reproduced for St Neots Library.

We held a micro festival on the market square to keep in line with guidance at the time. It helped build momentum and interest towards an even bigger future event.

 

2022

We were still finding our feet post-pandemic in what we could and couldn’t do but keen to keep growing and keeping connection with people. We were lucky, through our new director Ann Hawkins, to invite Jon Alexander to come to Wintringham school to discuss his new book, Citizens, Why The Key To Fixing Everything Is All Of Us.

 

2023

One more PechaKucha and then all our energy went into St Neots Festival. The scale of it was something no one was expecting and our volunteers and teams were astounding. It blew everyone away, it also blew us away!

We also somehow found the energy to put on another Micro Festival on the market square. Market Marvels became Neotists Presents… twice monthly, too.

We were grateful to have some wonderful people agree to be our Patrons – Stephen Ferguson, Mayor Dr Nik Johnson, and Hilary and Michael Murfin

A series of videos about creatives and their journey into their careers was created by Neotist Adrian Storey featuring some familiar faces. https://www.youtube.com/@neotists/videos

 

2024

Another two amazing people kindly agreed to become patrons, Jon Alexander and Dame Evelyn Glennie.  After winning Best Festival in Cambridgeshire 2023 the second St Neots Festival ended up being even bigger and better with even more volunteers and performers. The public support for it was wonderful and really established how much our town appreciates live entertainment.