Category: Blog

Introducing RicNic’s New Programmes

Established by school students in 2004 as a summer project, RicNic has grown into a charity where young people are at the heart of everything; from shaping creative projects to taking leadership roles across the organisation.

Our core programmes provide regular opportunities for children, teenagers and young adults to be creative and produce their own events, products and small businesses. We promote youth leadership with tangible results, helping young people to develop their financial literacy, communication and understanding of the world.

Our vision is clear:

A world where every young person has the confidence, tools, and platforms to shape their communities through creativity and leadership.

Our New Programme Strands

Our new strands create a clear pathway for children, teenagers, and young adults to explore creativity, build confidence, and step into leadership.

Foundry

Aimed at under 16s, Foundry provides spaces for children and their families to explore creative skills with an end goal of creating events or products for their local community. This includes after-school young-enterprise style projects, free holiday clubs, and one-off workshops with visiting artists such as West-End performers.

Recent Foundry projects have included:

FORGE – Skills, Mentoring & Creative Careers (16+)

Forge supports young adults as they explore creative industries and develop transferable skills for work and life. It includes:

FLOURISH – Workshops for Schools, Businesses & Communities

Flourish brings creativity into classrooms, workplaces, and community spaces. These workshops are adaptable, youth‑led, and designed to build independence, leadership, and social enterprise skills.

Workshops span all ages, including:

Flourish helps participants of all ages explore ideas, express themselves, and develop confidence in their own voice.

Why This Matters

RicNic’s impact goes far beyond creative output. Young people tell us that RicNic is:

We also offer paid roles, work experience, and trustee opportunities—because young people deserve real responsibility and real investment.

As one participant put it:

“Coming to RicNic just makes me feel happy!”

Get in touch for more information about what we do

How RicNic’s Creative Careers Coaching Helps Young Creatives Get Unstuck

If you’ve ever felt lost, overwhelmed, or simply unsure about your next steps in the creative industries, you’re not alone, and you’re exactly who RicNic Chats is designed for.

Creative career paths rarely follow a straight line. They veer off course, go off on tangents, and next steps often aren’t obvious. That’s why we created RicNic Chats; affordable, friendly, one-to-one coaching sessions for 16–25-year-olds navigating their next steps. Whether you’re applying for drama school, considering roles in fashion, exploring a freelance career as a designer, looking to publish your first novel, or simply trying to figure out what jobs actually exist, our mentors are here to help you breathe, focus, and move forward across the creative industries.

After completing a mentoring session:

For a single, free 30–45 minute chat, that’s a huge impact, and exactly why we run this programme.

What Participants Found Most Valuable

Every participant brings a different challenge, and every session is tailored to the individual. Here’s what young creatives told us they valued most

Why It Works

Our Creative Careers Mentoring is built around three principles:

1. Personalised, real-world guidance

Every mentor works actively within the creative industries; from theatre and design to producing and technical roles. They bring lived experience, current knowledge, and practical advice, and contacts across the UK.

2. Time to reflect and plan

Sometimes, the hardest part is figuring out the first step. Your mentor helps you break big ambitions into manageable actions.

3. Follow-up resources

Every session includes links, contacts, suggestions, and next steps so you can keep moving after the chat ends.

Ready to Get Unstuck?

Whether you’re trying to break into the creative world, make sense of your options, or simply want someone to talk things through with, RicNic is here for you.

From 2026, sessions will cost £10 for a 30–45 minute chat, including follow-up resources and signposting. This helps us cover our costs, but we don’t want payment to be a barrier to access.

Sessions are free for:

Find out more and book your chat

Looking Back at The Big Walsall Waddle

In August 2025, 21 giant rubber ducks took over Walsall to mark RicNic’s 21st birthday. Hosted across parks, libraries, community hubs and public spaces across Walsall, each duck was designed and decorated by a local group, organisation or business, transforming the town into an open‑air gallery that families could explore throughout the summer.

The project was made possible through the support of partners across Walsall. The Canal & River Trust came on board as headline sponsor, helping to highlight the borough’s rich canal heritage and the communities that live alongside it, with a variety of local organisations hosting ducks in libraries, leisure centres and other public venues to ensure the trail was accessible to families in every corner of the borough.

Every sculpture had its own story, brought to life by the groups who designed them. Some of the summer’s favourites included:

Alongside the trail, a number of pop-up activities took place: children were invited to design their own duck or write a duck‑themed story; duck-decorating workshops took place; and we held a raft day in Walsall Arboretum. This culminated in a celebration of the project, with all the ducks displayed at Walsall MakerFest and the winning ducks announced.

Find out more about The Big Walsall Waddle

Crewe Performer & Creative Team Callout

We’re launching a brand new project in Crewe this February. Get involved and create a brand new show to be performed, all within the space of a month.

The Show In A Month project is your chance to explore creating a new show from scratch collaboratively. Every element of this show is yours to create. We hand you an empty stage, and you decide what to fill it with.

You’ll form a production team to stage the show, with a director, MD, choreographer, producer, and technical director. Then it’s over to you to work with a cast of performers in the room to collectively explore your ideas and bring a show to life from a blank canvas. It’s your show, your rules.

All rehearsals take place in and around Crewe (venue details to be confirmed). Performances take place at the Lyceum Theatre Studio, Crewe

Open to anybody aged 16-22

Signup now at https://forms.gle/gJZzYBBGDUuqYxPg9

New Year Arts Festival – Walsall

New Year Arts Festival took place on Saturday, 11th January 2025 at The Crossing at St Paul’s, Walsall.

Organised by young creatives aged 16–21 with support from RicNic, this vibrant festival was a free celebration of creativity and community, offering a wide range of activities for all ages.

The event featured storytelling, performances, an open mic, junk drumming, choir and dance workshops, crafts, and lots of cake!

This project was funded by UK Government through the Shared Prosperity Fund, with Walsall Council.

Book now for RicNic’s Fundraising Gala

Hemmingway’s is an immersive fundraising event written, produced, and performed by RicNic Alumni, designed to be a night of twists, turns and lots of fun!

Throughout the course of the evening you will be introduced to a cast of quirky characters, one of whom is a murderer! Together with the cast, you’ll collect clues and solve the mystery together! Plus, you’ll be supporting the work that RicNic does!

This unique gala will be full of mystery, networking, and entertainment that brings together a diverse audience of creative professionals, art enthusiasts, and supporters.

Tickets include a drink on arrival and photography for you/your group, and all ticket sales support the future of RicNic.

Discounts apply for whole table bookings (10 people); perfect for a group of friends or a social event with colleagues.

Early-bird pricing applies until 8th December.

Limited tickets available, book now to avoid disappointment.

Friday 24th January, 7:30pm

The Old Library, Birmingham

Book Now

Join us for a workshop with Jodie Steele

We’re incredibly excited to welcome Jodie Steele to Burton this October Half Term.

Best known for playing Heather Chandler in the UK Off West End and West End premiere of Heathers in 2018, and Katherine Howard in the UK tour of Six, Jodie will be teaching routines from some of her past shows and answering questions about working in the ​performing arts.

Open to ages 13-20

Brewhouse Arts Centre, Staffordshire, DE14 1AA

 Wednesday 30th October, 12-3pm

Reserve your place: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/ricnic

Walsall young people get involved with Hamilton stars!

A huge congratulations to our fantastic Walsall workshop company who took part in two days of creativity, collaboration and fun! Workshop participants created original pieces inspired by historically themed musicals, then performed their work for members of the Hamilton UK tour cast, before working on some Hamilton choreography. A big thank you to Hamilton cast members Sam Oladeinde & Simeon Beckett for leading the choreography workshop and giving an insight into the creative industry.

RicNic delivering free Youth Music Project in Crewe

Crewe Town Council is committed to delivering projects that help to raise the aspirations of young people in Crewe, allowing them to achieve their potential and develop interests in the arts and culture. This Youth Music Project has been designed to facilitate participation in a high-quality, creative activity and offer a valuable learning experience that supports local young talent.

RicNic are facilitating the running of this project, in which participants will be given the opportunity to gain experience in performance and music event production; from planning through to stage tech – for free!

A group of young people aged 16-24 will be supported to create a mini youth festival of music inspired by different genres and represented by song, dance and instrumental performances.

We welcome applications from individuals who will be assigned a group, or from existing groups (e.g. from a school, dance group, amateur theatre company, etc)

How will people get involved?

Young people in Crewe from a variety of different youth settings (including traditionally underserved groups) have been invited to get involved in the project. Three youth sub-teams will be responsible for the design, coordination, management and marketing of the event to showcase local young talent in a variety of ways.

The teams will also be responsible for identifying and programming the event’s acts and activities, which will be drawn from local schools, dance and drama groups, amateur societies and youth groups.

Primary and secondary school children within the Crewe town boundary will also have the opportunity of taking part in interactive workshops in the run up to the event to explore different musical genres and design decorations for the festival venue.

People of all ages will be welcome to take part in the event on the day and come together to support the performers and activities!

Sign up to take part

Creative Team Callouts: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12bVV95zildYjvRldWggWZWDV71i3CrqG/view?usp=share_link

Tech Team Callouts: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yFIUCDnQaIf5b9WxTpbdfLk4c4mJm8pi/view?usp=share_link

Join The RicNic Team

Thanks to recent new project funding, we are looking for two individuals to join our staff team on a temporary basis, helping to plan and deliver our work across the West Midlands, Staffordshire & Cheshire. If you are passionate about the arts & making a difference, we would love to hear from you.

Outreach Co-Ordinator

Hybrid Remote, Part time-Fixed Contract until March 2025
£24,232 FTE / 8 hours per week

The Outreach Co-ordinator will support the delivery of our creative projects across community and school settings in the coming months, leading the delivery of weekly sessions (Friday afternoons) and some school holiday sessions with some our young people, creative workshops in schools, co-ordinating our Community Art Days across local community settings and supporting the administrative planning, delivery and evaluation of our projects. The postholder required to be onsite for weekly, regular sessions in Walsall, West Midlands and able to travel to different workshop locations as and when required.
Full details here: https://www.artsjobs.org.uk/jobs/search/42026

Workshop Assistant

Onsite, Part time – Fixed Contract until December 2024
Up to £11.44 per hour – 2-4 hours per week

Our Workshop Assistant will support the delivery of our weekly drama/creative sessions (Friday afternoons 4pm-6pm) in Walsall during term time. There will be additional hours available to support full-day sessions with our young people during the summer holidays, creating play-in-a-day style workshops for different age groups and to support our Community Art Days which run on weekends or in school holidays across local community venues.

Full details here: https://www.artsjobs.org.uk/jobs/search/42027

RicNic embraces inclusivity, diversity and equal opportunities across our organisations and throughout our projects. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, ages perspectives and skills, who respect the views of our participants and the challenges they face. Together we are then able to promote a culture of understanding, learning and collaboration across generations.

Please contact [email protected] with any questions.
To apply please send a CV and cover letter, or a video application telling us why you would like to be considered to the same email address.