Tutorial Feedback...

Today I had another tutorial and from this I was able to work out where to go next and things that needed to be tweaked/updated. 

Using the feedback from this tutorial my aims for the next two weeks are:

• CRB- aim to have CRB check underway, this has been held up due to knowing who to speak to so I am hoping this will be sorted by the time Easter is over, as I return to work placement then, and also it would be a good thing to put on my CV/website that I have an up to date CRB check.
• Fringe Festival- I have had an email from Mark Webster following our meeting about fringe festival- he had included Trevelyan Wright who is part of the festival co-ordination team from B-Arts who I have previously blogged about, and Emily from the course who will also be involved in the festival. From what I understood from Mark he would like me to conduct some workshops of the family day of the festival, I since haven't heard anything regarding the festival, so in the next week I plan to email Mark again to remind him of this, and possibly try and speak to others involved as if I am going to run workshops I would need sufficient time to organise these. 
• Another thing that was discussed was the website I have made for myself- Barbara felt this needed more context/explanation in the images section, and would benefit from a blog. So this afternoon I have tweaked the content of the website to hopefully rectify these issues. http://www.hayleygreen.portfoliobox.net/  http://hayleygreentheatre.wordpress.com/
• We also discussed who might become a mentor for me during this process. Trevelyan Wright from B-Arts was a possible name that came up, and also Cath Ralph who works at Burselm school of Art. 

Cast your Vote!

A little off topic, but something that I did last year, and completley captures my attention so I feel I need to share this.

Apart from wanting to be more actively involved in community and applied theatre work, my other main passion within theatre is Musicals. I cannot tell you how much I love going to see a good musical. I have to confess I would love to go into London more than I do to see shows, but money and being so far away at the moment means that I can't see as many shows in the West End as I would like to. I do however try to see touring productions, and productions close by. Though I admit I could make more effort to see a wider range of productions locally. 

This leads me onto something I have seen on Facebook regarding my favourite musical, Les Miserables. This long running musical was first introduced to me when at a very young age, my mother who is equally as in love with the musical as I am, used to play me the soundtrack whilst I was in the bath. I first went to see this with the drama group I was a member of for ten years, and have seen it now seven times, plus being lucky enough to get tickets to the 25th anniversary performance at the O2 Arena in October 2010. And I have to say, it is a night I simply will never forget, something that I am so glad I got to see in my lifetime, I am now hoping to see Les Miserables at least once a year if I can. 

Currently Les Miserables is shortlisted for the 2012 Olivier Audience Award, and needs as many votes as possible to win this award and be truly known as peoples favourite longest running musical. I for one have already casted my vote and urge you all to do so. This is such a brilliant musical, and really has appealed to so many people of different generations and from different countries. 

Check this out and vote!

'The Union of Creative Thinking'

Today I was browsing in the library (as you do on a lovely sunny day), and came across a lot of new things that excited me, mainly from the journals section. 

First thing I looked at was 'Creative Review', probably something that some of you are familiar with, but this was the first time I'd looked in it properly. Obviously it is more based on the design and visual arts side of creative arts, but I was captivated by all the amazing images within it. 

Advert for Cheltenham Design Festival

The next thing I came across was a journal called 'Journal of Arts and Communites', this immediately took my attention. On further reading I found out this journal is published three times a year and you can subscribe for a reasonable price. This particular journal was a part 2 about Arts and Human Rights. Within this they discussed a project which happened in 2005-2006 called the 'Exodus Project'. The project was made up of three parts, a day long performance/film about the biblical fable by Penny Woolcock, a participatory photography project called 'Towards a Promised Land' by Wendy Ewald, which consisted of her working with young individuals who had come over to England from other countries. And finally, a 25 metre tall sculpture entitled 'Waste Man' by a favourite artist/sculptor of mine, Anthony Gormley. I did my final year A-level art project on Anthony Gormley, and much of my work was inspired by his sculptors. The aim of this project was to engage the community on whatever level they wanted to be involved,approaching the idea of 'Exile', from a more universalist stance, rather than just engaging with specific community politics. 

'WasteMan' by Anthony Gormley

The second half of this journal provided two case studies which were more about theatre. The first was entitled 'Art and Education: A human right not a commodity unity of educational engagement in 'The Union of Creative Thinking'.' This was an article from Ian Yeoman, the artistic direct of 'Theatr Powys' in Wales, discussing one of the companies Theatre in Education programmes which had toured in parts of rural wales. The youngsters were given certain set parts of a story and then became 'members' of the 'Union of Creative Thinking' (UCT) whilst trying to under pick what was happening in the story and give reason for it. The work aimed to say that 'education is a process of becoming and children are active seekers after truth and injustice' (Yoeman, I. Art and Education: A human right not a commodity unity of educational engagement in 'The Union of Creative Thinking, Pg 229)  . During this programme the job of the UCT was to 'examine cause and effect,tying together their felt sense of past, the present and future potential. 

They were delivered a short narrative about a young boy who's brother had promised to never hurt him, and later in life had gone on to be a solider in the war, had come back and been completely transformed, and almost became alien to the young boy. The youngsters were given certain pointers throughout the process. Three disciplines they were given to stick by and use as a way to work through the process were: Applied Human Animology- a study of the human by looking at the basic animal characteristics we have inside, Applied Human Physiology- a way of exploring the human as an organism because anything and everything affects it, and Applied Seismology- which is a belief that by looking deep inside us, we can understand things better, by what is happening and get to the heart of the matter quicker.

It took me a while to get my head around these things, ( after photocopying this section of the journal and bringing it home with me) I understood that these disciplines were put in place by the fictional UCT as a way of getting the youngsters to use basic ideas but applying it to a world of possibilities by creative thinking. Overall this project aimed to show how theatre can be used as a tool for engagement and intuitive understanding of situations, teaching youngster about how they should be thinking and showing them that if they 'work collectively and are aware that their actions have implications attached to them. They take action consciously and transform the fictional world they are exploring. They are free to exercise power and this exercising of power demands listening, communicating, negotiating, challenging and supporting one another.'(Yoeman, I. Art and Education: A human right not a commodity unity of educational engagement in 'The Union of Creative Thinking, Pg 236)

This article not only provided me with a fascinating read it really reinforced by belief about the power of theatre in community and educational settings. At the end of the article  Yoeman explains how since this, in April 2011 Theatr Powys, after being alive for 40years, has been forced into non-excistence because of cuts to funding and the fact that theatre and drama work is deemed 'not worthy of investment', which is such a shame because after building up such a strong body of  valuable work over 4 decades, the company was still not seen as being something that is useful for education which just further emphasises the struggle which the arts has always gone through, and will continue to in society nowadays. Which is why it is so important to try and keep the arts alive by showing individual passion and willing for change. 

After this there is a review of a workshop which took place at the 'World Education Forum' in Palestine in 2010. During this forum, all participants were given roles in a fictional town, where they had to use a scenario about environmental pollution, to address the real issues of social injustice and radical social change. Using the three disciplines of: Popular Education- a movement which aims to forge links between education and social action in its most basic terms, Direct Action- which is the desire to immediately do something in order to prevent injustice, and Art- showing how valuable this can be as a form of explaining and exploring situations through theatre which can then be applied to reality. Again this workshop goes to show how theatre and the wider arts can be used as a means to address social, political, educational, cultural and other issues in society.

I will definitely be going back into the library next time I have a spare few hours to see which other of this journals they have archived as only the most recent is available from the shelf. 

Bibliograpahy:

•  Creative Review- April Edition
• Journal of Arts and Communities 2: 3, Intellect Publishing, Bristol

 

Drama Games

 I have started researching into Drama Games today. Over the years I have spent in community theatre groups I have experienced several different games, and variations of games and exercises that can be easily adapted for different groups. My work placement has been acting as a bit of a refresher course for me as I haven't been involved in community drama for quite a while. Many of the games we have been doing at placement I have come across in the past but like I say it is good to be reminded of some that I had forgotten, or got confused over some of the rules, and learn new variations.
  I have been researching into games, as I would like to have knowledge of as many games and exercises as possible, especially for a wide variety of people that I may work with in the future. Over the course of this MA I am learning more and more about being prepared, being organised and opening up new opportunities which I hadn't before thought about. 

I have come across several different guides which are going to be useful when planning workshops the first is a resource containing lots of games for different situations such as calming exercises, movement exercises and exercises for learning names and leaving the room.  The Primary Resource document also contains key reading which may be useful including Playing the Game by Christine Poulter.


I have next found a website Teach Kids Drama Stuff which has a wide range of warm up games, improvisation games, concentration games, movement games and many more. It also caters for lots of different age groups.

This sites will probably become favourites of mine over time on the MA. I also have two books to look into on the subject of games which are: 

• Johnston, C. (2010) Games for those who like to say No, Nick Hern Books: London
• Boal, A. (2002) Games for actors and non-actors, Routledge: Oxford

 

Alive...

It has come to my attention that I have not updated my blog in a while, this down to a number of things I think. I have been doing extra work placement which has been keeping me really busy, I have been back home for a short while, and I have been writing down books and interesting things I wish to blog about but have so many I have been finding it hard to put them all into motion.

My work placement is working well with regards to the project- they are taking a break for Easter now, and I am hoping after Easter I will be able to sample one of my workshops with the group of 13-15 year old's I work with. This would be great help for the project, and also as practice if I do end up producing some kind of workshop for the Fringe Festival's family day. I am hoping this week to produce some more workshops on the idea of 'Community Matters' but tailoring them to different groups ages and needs, so I can have a wide variety prepared. 

Sample Workshop:

Community Matters- Provisional Workshop Plan -1 hour session

 For  12-16 years approx.

Materials Needed:

·         A3 paper

·         Marker Pens

Starter Exercise 1: 10 minutes max.

Needed to get everyone warmed up, focussed and working together 

Zip, Zap, Boing- everyone forms a circle. A ‘zip’ starts getting passed round the circle from person yo person, if a person wishes to pass to someone across the circle they pass a ‘zap’ if a person wishes to reject someone’s move they say ‘boing’ in which case the zip/zap goes back in the other direction and so on.

‘Geezer’ version in which zip is replaced by ‘yes mate’, zap is replaced by ‘what you looking at?’, boing is replaced by ‘easy tiger’ and at any point before someone’s turn they can choose to say ‘Geezer’, in which case everyone then repeats ‘Geezer’

‘Eastenders’ version in which zip is replaced by ‘Alright’, zap is replaced by ‘Leave it out’, boing is replaced by ‘Get outta my pub’ and at any point before someone’s turn they can choose to say ‘You ain’t my mother’ in which case everyone replies ‘yes I am’ and the game continues like so.

Starter Exercise 2: 5 minutes max.

Intended for more focus and concentration before the main exercises.

Pass the Clap- To start everyone simply passes a clap around the circle, the clap must be passed as fast as possible but each person cannot clap until the person before them has clapped. The game can then be complicated, each person has to then clap once to receive the clap (at the same time as the person giving it to them) and once again to pass on the clap (at the same time as the person they are passing it to). The game can then be varied again- each person has to make eye contact with the person they are wanted to pass the clap to, they can choose anyone in the circle, then they must clap at the same time as their chosen person to pass it on.

Main Exercise-Part 1: 5 minutes max.

As a group people must think of as many words/phrases which come into their head when they hear the word ‘Community’ 

Main Exercise-Part 2: 10 minutes max.

On a large sheet of paper each person must draw a body- spilt the body in half, with one side labelled ‘Who am I?’ and one sided labelled ‘Who I want to be?’ in relation to community, think about who you are, how you might be perceived and write it in the ‘who am I’ section, and in the ‘who I want to be section’ write about what you would like to be like, how you wish people might perceive you.

Main Exercise-Part 3: 15 minutes

In groups of 3, 4, or 5, create short snippets of scenes from the idea of ‘I thought I was part of a community but I was wrong’. These scenes need only be 60 seconds long. Think about how communities work scenarios which might happen within communities, different communities.

Showback: 10 minutes

Groups will then have ten minutes to show back their work to each other, discuss ideas and reflect.

Finish Exercise: 5 minutes

Group may choose from games, or suggest one themselves but if they suggest they must be willing to lead the exercise and participate fully.

·         Wink Murder: one person takes on the ‘detective’ role. One person is chosen as the ‘murderer’ the aim of the game is for the murderer to kill everyone else before the detective can guess who it is.

·         Splat: one person stands in the middle of the circle and shouts someone else’s name- that person then has to duck, and the people either side have to turn and ‘splat’ each other, the last person to do so is out, or if the person ducking hesitates. The last two people then take part in a ‘splat off’- they stand back to back and someone says words beginning with a certain letter, for each word they take a step apart, when a word is said starting with a different letter, they turn and ‘splat’ fastest person is the winner.

·         Eyes up: everyone stands in a circle with their eyes to the ground, someone says eyes up and each person chooses someone in the circle it look at, if the person you have chosen is looking back at you, you are both out. Someone says eyes down and the game continues like so until there is a winning pair.

Powering Through..

I have been rather preoccupied with work placement this week, but have managed I think to complete most of my aims. As previously mentioned I have completed my website, my contact database, had my meeting with Mark Webster, and began to create more of a brand for my project. 

• Another aim I set for myself was to find out about possible ways of funding if I were to need this for any projects/ workshops or events in the future. And I am waiting for a reply from Stoke City Council creative arts department. When looking into creative arts, there are a few options available for funding. 

1.  Arts and Humanities Research Council gives opportunities for funding for research grants both pratice and applied led. 
2. British Arts gives details of companies offering funding for people involved in arts.
3. Arts Council is probably the most well known for a range of funding opportunities.
4. British Council-Arts sector gives resources for researching funding.
5. The Prince's Foundation for children and the arts offer funding themselves and give resources for additional funding.
6. Arts Quest offers a range of sources and funding options.
7.   Community Arts Fund-Staffordshire offers up to £800 of funding for arts projects which benefit the community and aim to enhance involvement in creative arts.

• The next aim was to consider my personal brand and what that could be as this would be important to find out when considering an overall brand for what I want to achieve throughout the MA. I have been using the guideline sheet that we received when Jackie Hartley gave us a presentation on personal branding. The first box on the sheet was 'Meaning, things that matter and that I care about' in the box I came up with Theatre, people having arts in their lives, and arts in education, people having access to the things that they deserve, animals and animal welfare/cruelty. The next box was 'Strengths, what I consider myself to be good at,what people come to me for'  in this box I wrote things like listening/advice, humour, communication, trustworthy/reliable, passive, willing to do things for people-doesn't say no very often, busy, hard-working. One of the boxes detailed things you would like to achieve in the next few weeks/months and years- so I have written myself a lot of lists on each of these detailing my goals and have been crossing them out as I complete them. Another box on the sheet that I have filed in is 'Interests' for which I put Drama/Theatre, musicals, animals-especially dogs, art, creativity, music, photographs, magazines, fashion, documentaries and quizzes, creativity. This are all things to consider when thinking about my personal brand and the area I would like to work in. I have also been asking people about how they see me and words they would use to describe me so far these words have included:

1.  Artistic/Creative- in being practical with crafts, arts, drama, baking, sewing.
2. Determined- wants to see things through
3. Friendly- makes friends easily and likes talking to new people
4. Helpful- in home and the work place-wants to do the best she can
5. Hard worker- gets through lots of work and makes the best use of time
6. Sensitive- lets things affect her which maybe shouldn't
7. Dramatic- can take things seriously when needed
8. Reliable- willing to do stuff for people-nearly always says yes
9. Responsible- good at looking after people and other things
10. Organised- good at time manging, making lists about what she needs to get done that day. 

• As mentioned in a previous aims review I have been working on a logo for my project 'Community Matters' so that if in the future I was to have my own company that ran workshops on different subjects each set of workshops would have there own project logos, proposals and aims under the main company name. Below are some examples of what I have been working on: 

 

I did these using software called 'Scrapbook Factory' where you can use templates or start from scratch and they provide you with lots of different fonts and graphics. My favourite so far though is this one :
 

I like the way that the graphic and lettering link together and that the graphic to me reflects people and gives off the right vibe. I will aim to incorporate this onto the provisional workshops I have been working on, as I have been trying to plan more with a variety of different ages and groups in mind, but this could link them as one 'subject' if they were ever to be used. 

• The last aim I set for myself was to do an action plan of things I would need to consider in the future if I were to launch a much bigger project similar to the kind of thing I am looking at now, and obviously things like this would be tweaked as I went along: So far this action plan includes:

 

 
 

More aims completed

Another update now on my aims for the two weeks-

• After a very frustrating day shouting at the laptop in despair and deleting my account and starting over I have now managed to get myself a website up and running, it may need some further tweaking and obviously I shall aim to keep it as up to date as possible but the basics are there! http://www.hayleygreen.portfoliobox.net/

•  I met with Mark Webster at the university yesterday to talk about creating more contacts in the local area, building up my network and events I might be interested in getting involved with.  This was once again another successful meeting. Mark, like Rob Marsden also suggested B-Arts.  Mark was in meetings with one of the directors of B-Arts before he met me to arrange the 'Fringe Festival' which they have coming up. He mentioned a Community Day which is going to be part of the festival, and said that there may be a possibility for me to run some workshops on this day, or just help in general with the festival. So he has said he will email his contact at B-Arts and get back to me on arranging this.  He then suggested PiCL (Partners in Creative Learning) who are an organisation based in Newcastle under Lyme specialising in creative arts in the community, and using creative partnerships and arts council initiatives to engage communities. The next people he suggested that it might be useful for me to talk with were The Cultural Sisters who are a group of artist working creatively in communities, aiming to engage people through creative processes. Although mainly focusing projects on art based creativity they often collaborate with other create people, so this may work as a more diverse range of people to meet with.  Finally Mark discussed some groups in Wolverhampton and a Black Country touring arts company if I want to look further a field. And he has given me the name of someone else in the Creative Communities unit at the university whose focus may be more fitting with theatre, so he suggested a meeting with her.

Working through my aims..

In my last blog I outlined my aims for the next two weeks, this week I have managed to complete a few of those aims, some are still in the process but getting there.

• Build a contact database- I have bought myself an address book and written all my important contacts in there, and I have also created a spreadsheet for my contacts, and so far have written all the contacts I have made in that spreadsheet, so that it is easily accessible and can be updated as it needs to be. I have a bibliography of all the websites I have visited/blogged about and the books I am reading, so I will add these to the spreadsheet as well so they are all as a collective together and not just written on separate  pages which may be easily lost.  

 

• I have my meeting with Mark Webster set up for tomorrow afternoon-so this will provide me with more resources

 

• I am currently working on a logo to make 'Community Matters' more of a brand-so that if I were to plan workshops with this name then the brand will come through and I am also planning some provisional workshops- so that if this project were to develop in that way- I would have provisional plans for workshops that would be ready to go. At the moment I am using this project as a way to explore and develop my work in applied theatre through the idea of exploring communities and community theatre, but after the talk we had from Janine Goldsworthy from Rednile Projects I began to realise the importance of correct planning, and the hard work which needs to be involved. I was already aware of the things I would need to do to achieve my goals, but the presentation from Janine just further highlighted about how these things work when put into practice and what you need to do to be fully prepared, you need to plan projects as if you had already had the job, so I am trying to plan workshops that could be up and ready to go if needed.

Aims

Although I have been gathering lots of research together and emailing lots of potential contacts I feel I need to give myself some sort of action plan with aims to meet before the next two weeks are over.

My aims:

• Consider my personal brand-research and try to outline what this could be
• Make a website
• Make a database of the contacts I have made so far/websites I have found so they are easily accessible
•  Meet with Mark Webster from the university to discuss further the community theatre sector
• Create more of a brand for the 'Community Matters' project
• Research ways to get funding for possible projects in the future- possible meeting with Paul Bailey from the community arts projects department at Stoke City Council-Civic Centre. 
• Make an action plan of the things I would need to consider if I were to start a community theatre programme in the future 

Trying to get involved...

I had a meeting yesterday with Rob Marsden who is a senior Drama lecturer at the University. 
He was very helpful in assisting me with what may become useful contacts throughout the project, and Rob himself has worked closely with all of the organisations he suggested.

 Firstly he suggested Borderlines at the New Vic Theatre, who run a variety of projects with different groups in the community. Now I am currently undertaking work placement at the New Vic, with two groups at the moment, but  I did have a meeting with the head of Borderlines Sue Moffat last week who had a chat to me about some of the projects they are currently working on and said she will email me a timetable of what they are doing so I can possibly observe some of the sessions, and although this meeting was primarily for work placement purposes, I feel that the work placement at the New Vic is definitely going to go hand in hand with the research and possible workshops for this project, so I will be able to use this as an opportunity not only for work experience but also to get an insight into more diverse groups in the community for this project. 

The next group Rob mentioned were  Rideout who I have previously found earlier in the week. The organisation is run by co-directors, firstly Saul Hewish who was also a founding member of Geese Theatre UK, and he has done extensive work with the probation services, and in Applied Theatre across the country, and in the USA where he worked exclusively with Geese USA, he has also produced projects with young people looked after by the local authorities, who have behavioural and educational needs and who are looked after by youth offending teams. He did these projects under the name of  the Acting Out Company. The second being Chris Johnston who again has produced extensive work with the criminal justice system. He was founder of the Insight Arts Trusts, which then became theatre company Insight Theatre, who produced work with ex-offenders to tour in prisons and arts centres. He is the author of several books on the subject of Applied Theatre. 


Rob also suggested I contact B-Arts who run projects in the local area and are based in Newcastle-under-Lyme. He has worked with them in the past and they do some interesting work not just in theatre but other areas of creative arts.


And finally he suggested the Creative Learning Department which is in association with the Regent Theatre, and runs out of the Victoria Hall in Hanley. This organisation regularly produces projects, events and workshops/activities for those interested in Creative Learning. In July they are running the Creative Minds Festival in which they are putting together a group of twelve professionals (project manager, drama facilitators, music and signing practitioners, visual artists and film makers) to work with community groups with an aim of allowing young people to express themselves through the arts, and at the end of the festival performances will showcase the work that has been undertaken. They are only looking for two drama facilitators and I imagine it is going to be very competitive so if I apply and am lucky enough to get chosen then that would obviously be a fantastic opportunity, if not I could always offer to volunteer for the event if they need any additional helpers. I have emailed the department and will wait for the response before deciding on the festival. 


This meeting was very helpful especially as Rob has done work with all the above groups. I have sent emails out today and will hope to get a response in the next week.