Schools & Communities

Workshops with TOAST at King’s Lynn Academy, Whitefriars Primary School, King Edward VII Academy introducing pupils to poetry through looking at and creating sonnets and exploring the poets of the Romantic era.

A workshop with clarinet virtuoso, Emma Johnson with woodwind students at Springwood High School, ahead of Emma's performance at the 2024 Festival. Under 18s and participants of the workshop are offered subsidised tickets.

Families are invited to drop in and create their very own Pop Art collage with the team from The Workshop, inspired by the Festival exhibition.

BBC Young Musician finalist, Maxim Calver visited Eastgate Academy Primary School in King's Lynn following his performance at the Festival's Spring series of coffee concerts on Friday 3rd February. He performed to the pupils and answered their questions about the cello and his life as a musician. 

In September 2022 we delivered primary school workshops in Walpole Cross Keys and Nelson Academy, Downham Market with Black Umfolosi.  Sessions were supported by PEACH West Norfolk (LCEP) through funding linked to their Barbican Box project, which enabled schools to access sessions for free.  KLF then offered heavily subsidised tickets to their evening performance for participating children and their parents. The group taught dance steps and vocal parts introducing participants to traditional Zimbabwean styles resulting in a rewarding and memorable experience. 

A total of 75 children took part in workshops which were then shared with other members of the school reaching a further 200+ children.  The group gave fascinating insights about where they live and their background – making the whole experience enlightening, informative and entertaining. 

Spring 2022 saw the Passacaglia Trio visit Whitefriars Primary school following their Coffee Concert performance.  An entertaining and highly interactive assembly-style performance saw the trio perform for around 200+ children.  Demonstrating the musical range of their individual period instruments, they performed excerpts from their early music repertoire, gave historical context and took questions from the children.

The Family Day included storytelling sessions, Lino Cut workshops and badge making. Louise Tiplady ran two Lino Cut sessions aimed at families (6yrs +).  The sessions were to broaden the ways in which people could engage with the Festival exhibition and prior to both sessions Tiplady, guided participants around the Fermoy Gallery explaining the art works and themes. She then guided participants through design, technique, and execution of their own lino cuts which they were able to take home with them.

"Thank you so much for a wonderful morning of creativity! Please repeat this workshop. We all had such a fabulous time and it was great to see the exhibition first for inspiration and then create our own master pieces! Thanks again!"

An exhibition of work by internationally renowned artist, Gustav Metzger was shown in the Fermoy Gallery featuring works created while living in King’s Lynn between 1950 and 1959. Students from NMS Kick the Dust Project helped to hang the exhibition giving them first-hand experience of the processes and work involved. 

The newspaper installation in the Red Barn aimed to engage the public by restaging Metzger’s participatory project Mass Media (2011/2019), this prompted interesting discussion and focus points. Local primary schools and a local community group attended workshops which involved a guided tour of the exhibitions, discussions about Metzger’s life & art, a look at newspapers and what they mean
to us today and the restaging of an old photograph of Metzger in his studio. 

Groundwork Gallery also organised a Study Day in partnership with King’s Lynn Festival entitled ‘Fragile Nature’ which looked at art and the environment. It focused on Metzger but also looked at other artists with strong environmental influences.

Rachael Williams from Stories of Lynn ran a series of workshops with classes from Heacham, West Walton and Clenchwarton primary schools using archive maps as a starting point for artwork & linocut prints which formed the core of the Connect exhibition.

Featuring over 90 pieces of work by local school children these works were also shown alongside works created in community open-access workshops. The exhibition featured interactive connection games and tile printing for visitors to express their thoughts on the displayed works. 

Connect Exhibition related art activities – run in partnership with Stories of Lynn (March –April 2019) included Cutting the Cuts, C-c-c-cARTography and Map Archive Open Day.