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Ka mau gora! Ka mau gora!
So, mae niams Danny Allinson.
I'm the director of Apollo Arts.
Apollo Arts has been going for about seven years now.
It's coming up to its eighth birthday in fact in February.
And we're an arts education company. We do arts, dance, drama, music and media.
Hi, I'm George Smith and it's absolutely brilliant work with Apollo Arts.
I've actually been a part of Apollo for a number of years now as a student.
I go to workshops, I assist, I shadow. There's so much more I can learn and develop.
And I also go down to the stage once, a fortnight, down to Newcastle and do my college course over there.
The company started because Steve and myself, Steve's the other director.
We both were in a position where we were working in education, we were working with a lot of young people in Teeside.
And we kind of got really busy between us and we said rather than just doing this on our own
shall we form an organisation that can really provide a good quality service in Teeside.
So I started off helping doing some computer work and then doing some phone calls.
And then I've gradually gone up and done some workshops and schools, which is really fun.
But yeah, it's not just doing little bits and bobs as the apprentice, it's doing loads of stuff but in a period of time.
I also need to be happy. You can score then, be really sad or say, ah, a rubbish day.
Even if you've had a rubbish day, you need to be happy and full of energy for the kids.
Because if they've had a rubbish day, then your energy and your happiness runs on again.
So I'm really happy.
I'm happy.
I'm happy.
I'm happy.
I'm happy.
So we've played at lots of different events over the years.
There's different capacities we're working.
We have groups like the Apollo Street Band, which goes and does performances.
And another group called Grooving, which is like a drumming, brass, guitar and bass type group.
But it's movable, it's portable.
So we're not stuck to one place.
We have like a little cart that we will round with the PA system all off and we can kind of perform as and where you need us.
We've performed at all sorts of events over the years.
We've done, we did Brazil vs England game.
We played the Middlesbrough games regularly.
We know the band outside of the ground and when you turn up to a Middlesbrough football game,
we did the Olympic torch ceremony when it came to Middlesbrough.
We led it through Middlesbrough and all the way up to the stage.
We did the performance there when it arrived, which is fantastic.
We've done the Transport Bridge celebrations.
We've been on Luck North, the One Show, Sky, Match of the Day.
All sorts of different things.
So we kind of perform all over the place.
Thames Festival, we did a few years ago.
Coventrys, Olympic Handle over.
There's been lots of different events that we've been part on.
As well as that, we also work with Stockton Council and Middlesbrough Council regularly on things like Stockton Sparkles.
So we have a lot of acts performing in the town centre through Christmas
to kind of give it that festive feel as you are going to do new Christmas shopping in the Christmas markets.
We do the reindeer parade.
And one of the biggest ones we do every year is Stockton International Youths' High Festival.
And that's a brilliant day. It's just full of music, art, dance, drama, the whole festival. It's fantastic.
We've really worked hard to build the organisation.
So a bit of advice to people to do what they want to do.
Well, don't be under any illusions.
It's really easy to just go from A to B.
Put the work in, put the gas in.
