Plog

This year’s Bang! Festival at Broadway is going to be a good one - we’re already looking forward to it…  Spread over 3 days, and celebrating it’s 10th birthday, we just can’t wait!

As usual we bombarded them with our recent films! Watch out for a selection of modern day myths - Medusa, Minotaur, Cyclops and Daedalus & Icarus, as well as some living cave art in Stone Age Stories

See you there?!  27th, 28th and 29th of November

The challenge was set by The Mighty Creatives - to make six short films, in six days, with with six (or seven!) pupils in each of the six schools…

Off we went - filming, animating, acting, drawing, photography, interviews, sound recording - we used a huge range of techniques to capture pupils thoughts about their work with Creative Partnerships.

The six schools were all involved in the first year of CP work in Lincolnshire - each school worked with different practitioners, and ran different projects. The films visually reflect the nature of the projects, whilst taking a focus on pupil involvement and their points of view.

Throughout our adventures we kept a blog, click below to see what happened and watch the films..

A long while ago, we went to Rutland House’s Christmas party, where we were asked to work with pupils and their families to create an interactive sound making sculpture!

We built a frame, and had help from pupils, staff, mums, dads, brothers and sisters, to do the rest.

Hose pipe trumpets were coiled around the frame, with pumps that could be stood on or wheeled over to make loud noises.  Pieces of copper were dangled from the roof to bash and tinkle, jingling bells on strings and otehr dangling noise makers were also tied, twisted and attached.

Instruments were made using scented seeds, tins, and recycled stuff that could be bashed, shaken or rattled to add to the cacophony of wonderful sounds.

Rutland House is a SCOPE School for young people with multiple physical and learning disabilities including cerebral palsy.

Talking of bones (which we were before all the technical problems):

Here’s a short film animated by young people visiting Creswell Crags last Saturday. If you don’t know, Creswell Crags is a limestone gorge full of ancient caves. The Caves are full of the remains of animals and human tools,  and they’re the only known place where you can see Ice Age rock art anywhere in this country! Pictures that are around 13,000 years old.

Well, what an inspiring place! Working outside under a tent, children drew Ice Age animals, hunters and scenes using crayons and charcoal - Afterward animating them really quickly, to tell simple stories.

The changing light in the tent really added to the effect! Like flickering fire-light. Later we added photographs of the rock walls in the background.

The music was made by Newgate Lane primary school on their hand made instruments.

We’ve been thinking about bones for a recent project at Newgate Lane Primary School!

Class four cast their minds back 13,000 years to create ice age art and bone flutes for Shine Week at Creswell Crags. The bones that they made have been buried in an archaeological dig box for other children to explore, unearth and use to make massive mammoth skeletons, or scary saber tooth shapes!

The flutes that they each made, using hand tools, wood and bone (PVC pipe) are available for visitors to the Crags to play and admire, and so too is a stoneage spooky cave soundtrack that class four composed and recorded with their own instruments.

Keep your eyes (and ears) peeled - the music they recorded will feature in an exciting cave art animation that we’ll add soon…

As if all that wasn’t enough, the children made their own drawing implements and sketched cave art with natural inks and charcoal.

This 3 day Creative Partnerships project, provided interactive resources for lots of school visits arranged to Creswell Crags for Shine Week.

Martin works a lot with a group in Derby -funded and organised by QUAD and Children’s Fund - an after school club for young people in Derby, some of whom are on the autistic spectrum. They make all kinds of things: Animation, sculpture, comics, films, music, photos, games; there will be more here from Q Club soon that’s for sure.

This time, with lots of help from local artists Sophie and Barbara, they built a geodesic, multi-sensory, spaced-out chill-out pod. A space to relax in and be surrounded by sounds, colours, light and textures.

So much happened! -

The whole group of 10 worked together to decorate 40 bamboo triangles with all kinds of reclaimed materials from PARC (an amazing scrap centre). We tried to make the shell translucent, wove lights into the structure, and the next stage saw us filming a coloured light show to be projected onto and through the dome. Have a look at a snippet.

We used the computer to mess around with the colours of floating inks and bottles of oil, glitter, paint and water. The final touches were hand made cushions, a dreamy soundtrack and a lot of effort to put it together.

Finally, on the last day the lights were turned out, the music started up and everyone got a chance to climb in and relax! It was so wonderful to see how everyone did their best to help put this thing together, it was a real team effort, firm friendships were made under the faceted roof.

All of the young people got a DVD of photos music and the full 20 minute(!) liquid light projections to enjoy at home too. If you fancy making your own geodesic dome (who wouldn’t) there are lots of good instructions on the web.