Harrogate's spa heritage getting young people pumped!

Taking inspiration from Harrogate’s rich spa heritage, Pumped! is Harrogate Youth Theatre’s forthcoming production in conjunction with the Royal Pump Room Museum.

The performances take place on Saturday 1 December in the museum’s 1842 Room, but prior to that HYT members and the museum are collecting information on the town’s spa history. To which end, each building is inviting members of the public to tell their stories and share their memories and artifacts to expand collective knowledge of the town in two separate open days.

Harrogate Theatre’s open day is on Saturday 3 November with the Royal Pump Room Museum’s open day taking place at the Mercer Art Gallery a week later on Saturday 10 November. Locals (and beyond) are encouraged to drop in between 11am and 3pm with whatever they can offer. At the Mercer Art Gallery, curators will be on hand to help document findings. The aim of these events is to find out more about Harrogate’s rich spa heritage, and at the same time raise the profile of HYT’s Pumped! and include the community in its creation.

HYT and the museum are after stories of Harrogate’s Spa History; the people who visited, why they moved here, whether they visited the spa or even if they had a relative who worked in the hotels or treatment rooms. The project would particularly love to hear from the WWII generation and/or their relatives in order to learn more about Harrogate in that era.

The information will be recorded in different ways – dictaphone/photos and written notes – then integrated into HYT’s performance piece, which explores the people influential in the history of Harrogate: Betty Lupton, Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens and Samson Fox and more. The young cast is researching and devising the show, recreating the tales it finds most interesting.

Tickets for Pumped! are available now and can be booked securely online at www.harrogatetheatre.co.uk or through the Harrogate Box Office on 01423 502 116.