Plog

Imagine a festival somewhere in a parallel universe… Where giant slugs serve pizza and guinea pigs eat pies, romance blossoms for penguins and portaloos, monster musicians play on stage, kitchen utensils form a band, and the crowd contains all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures! Here it is…

Almost 100 short animations made by hundreds of young people, in a few hours, in a big red tent.

This, our fourth time at the greenman, was exciting and fun - we worked with more young people than ever before, and we were really impressed with the ideas, patience, creativity and skills that we saw! Well done to all who took part.

Thanks to Ste and Sian, Emily, Eileen and all the crew in the kids area, and also to Remix, who very kindly let us use the music that young people made with them during the festival.

(See the comments for animation software tips and links)

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.