Connecting Creativity.
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We're a creative group who specialise in bespoke events, alternative education and community projects. We love networking with people and exploring new ideas through art and music, we aim to build platforms to elevate, educate and connect through creativity.
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Pre-node - Phase 01: Foundation For Youth Innovation (2008-2013).
A group of creative youth volunteers came into contact through thedropinn.org a youth charity and organisation. It was at this youth and community centre we started delivering exciting projects from U.V graffiti walls, to under 18 ‘Safe Rave’ nights with DJ workshops, build-a-band workshops and band nights.
After a few years of very successful National Award winning youth projects our team started to expand our services and reach out to other areas offering workshops at festivals and running stages for big community events. Although this was still all focused on young people and The Drop Inn it was starting to evolve into something else.
We started running over 18 nights and big fundraising events which were designed to support the youth charity and organisation but caused some minor confusion running them as The Drop Inn youth centre. In May 2011 we got a huge opportunity to run an arena stage at Bearded Theory. After a successful weekend at the festival we started the motion to create a separate social enterprise that had the freedom to expand into other areas and help deliver services to wider communities while still supporting the youth charity at the heart of it.
node56 was founded in 2011 but did not become active until 2013 with the official launch event.
Why node56?
NODE/ is our connecting point. /DE56 is the area we connected.
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The Three Media Monkeys - Phase 02: Events, Media, Training (2013-2017).
Node56’s first official launch event was FreeFall festival on September 21st 2013. FreeFall was a very popular music and arts festival which celebrated live music, DJs, VJing, live graffiti and had a few stalls. It became an annual celebration which FreeFell on the 21st of different months.
The node56 brand logo wasn’t developed until 2015. It was created to represent the three core services Events /Media / Training, as well as the three directors;
Tom Stone (twintstone) - See node - Graphic design and stage production.
Paul Shookz (Shookz) - Hear node - DJ and producer.
Jasper Taylor (Jasper Malone) - Speak node - Musician, singer/songwriter.
We each continued to deliver exciting creative workshops across the East Midlands and started developing new unique events. The Safe Rave youth project was rolled out county wide and expanded as well as rebranded as the Edit youth project to incorporate a wider range of creative workshops. Running parallel to the Edit project we worked in partnership with The Drop Inn which was converted into a PRU (Pupil Referral unit) to deliver creative lessons for our joined alternative education programme EdDi.
In 2014 we took over Jasper Jam and expanded it by introducing big themed stages and promoting it to become one of the most popular open mic jam nights in the county. This was followed by launching a more intimate open mic night called The Sunday Late Club at a second venue which was a huge step forward influencing a lot of other Sunday live music nights in Belper. The success of these open platform music nights evolved into running a regular weekly live gig sequence which we used to discover and promote original music with a mix of some classic covers. Our Live Music Lock-up became one of the most popular regular live music nights in Belper and by far the most diverse offering a huge range of live music genres and styles. It established the perfect structure to then support the big community events. The live acts who performed at these gigs were able to perform on bigger stages at the community events which was only made possible through the sponsorship through the Live Music Lock-up event brand. We branded our community event support package BelperLive.
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Community Collaborations - Phase 03: Connecting Creativity (2016 - 2019).
Due to other commitments Paul and Jasper stepped down as directors in 2016/17 so node56 was looking to wind things down with Tom also having a full time job as well. At the same time we had already connected with a number of other great people like SlobDog who formed a partnership and helped support all the larger scale events. During this transition we stopped both our open mic nights to focus on the Live Music Lock-up and BelperLive community events. We also had to stop delivering most workshops except for the creative workshops we delivered as the Rogues Hideout at Bearded Theory which we expanded. In 2016 we got involved in Bearded Theory’s Festival School. This was a huge turning point for Node56 as it would come to influence our future direction into delivering more workshops, developing teaching resources and moving back into educational services.
The only events we delivered were mainly all under the same roof at The George & Dragon, this venue effectively became our new HQ. We were running regular events at this venue while forming a solid partnership were the venue also helped support and sponsor bigger community event stages. In return we were having lots of fun constantly changing and reshaping the stage for their themed events, constantly pushing the stage design, making them bigger and better every time. We introduced a few more successful event brands like Rocktoberfest which became the biggest heavy rock and real ale night in Belper. We began working with other groups and organisations, helping support more events outside of Belper. We also developed our own version of Busk Stops which we ran up to 10 stages for Belper Arts Festival at it’s peak in 2018. All these events and projects continued up until the end of 2018.
node56 events: • Live Music Lock-up (live gigs).
• Jasper's Jam (live jam night). • The Sunday Late Club (open mic).
• FreeFall (music & arts festival). • Rocktoberfest! (annual beer festival).
Other events:
• Belper Food Festival (BelperLive).
• The Belper Games (BelperLive).
• Belper Goes Green Eco Festival (BelperLive).
• Bearded Theory Festival (Rogues Hideout).
• Belper Arts Trail (BuskStops).
• Matlock Bath Music Festival (BuskStops).
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Post-node - Phase 04: Creative, Community, Education (2019 - Present).
We’ve ran 270+ events, designed over 200+ posters and promotions, created 50+ event brands and built 30+ unique stage production designs. We absolutely love everything about the last 6 years, the people we have met, the art and music we have been surrounded by, pushing ourselves with bigger challenges, having lots of creative fun and we have enjoyed promoting the great team collaborations behind all these events and projects. Thank you to each and everyone of you who has been there for us and we really hope you enjoyed it all so far.
The Drop Inn youth centre has now closed so we have lost our solid foundation. We don’t want to completely lose our roots and want to return to the source of community creativity that created our social enterprise. We are rEvolving, turning our first full circle by starting back at the beginning strengthening our own community roots, we’ll be focussing back on more creative workshops, community projects and alternative education.
Our last event was FreeFall:Departure which marked our 6th anniversary, it’s also our last official direct node56 event for a while with the exception of one event brand continuation. The next few years will be a bit quieter while we re-establish ourselves and take steps in a new direction. The first big step is introducing not one but two new directors. Andrea Fox MBE the founder of The Drop Inn will be continuing her community legacy through a series of community projects. We also have Danielle Atterby joining as a new director. Danielle has qualified as a teacher and already been a huge part of node56 with Bearded Theory’s Bearded School management and supported a lot of the events, helping tirelessly keeping it all organised behind the scene. It’s amazing to make Danielle’s involvement more official.
node56 will be back to being a trio, each director with different backgrounds and skills to bring to the foreground of creative education, unique events and community projects. This is the current node team;
HEAD - Danielle Atterby BA (Hons) English & History, PGCE with QTS - Education
HEART - Andrea Fox MBE - Community
SOUL - Tom Stone BA (Hons) Multimedia Design - Creativity
Two thirds of us are living and working as teachers in China as we develop new exciting projects and some creative teaching resources under a new brand called EdVantage. We are opening a new office in Belper in the old Drop Inn JamJar music room which will act as our new community office (Project Phoenix). While we take some time out of hosting our own events some of our community event service facilities known as BelperLive will remain open for hire (please contact for enquiries). We have decided to organise our annual Bearded Theory stage which we have updated with a slight rebrand. The Rogues Hideout: Eastern Connection will be our first ever remote event organised from 7,000 miles away. We also plan to host some more original fundraising and networking events in the future. This year we are also be designing a brand new website which we hope to launch in 2020 to replace our terrible temporary one thats been stuck there for 7 years!
We are looking forward to sharing our fresh ideas with you all, reconnecting and celebrating more creativity, delivering valuable community work and developing new teaching resources. Who knows some of these projects might become international while two of us are in China.
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Please visit www.node56.com for more information but please excuse our temporary website, it’s being updated this year. Thank you.
