25.3.14

Creative Inspiration



This week we have discovering all things creative with little nippers from the far flung corners of the welsh valleys, Heolldu and Ferndale Comprehensive to be exact. Our task was as part of our continuation of work with First Campus have asked us to help deliver a project headed by the Hay Festival entitled The Scribblers tour. 



As in previous years we have delivered workshops and performances across South Wales to encourage the youth of today to pick up the dusty old leaves of a book and get stuck in. This year our approach has been slightly different. We evaluated past projects with First Campus (over many a cappuccino) and came to the conclusion that we needed to broaden the contact with the young people that attend the day of performance and visits from authors at the university, and one day simply wasn't enough, we needed to plant the seed, wait for it to grow, admire the flower and then continue to water and nurture it to keep it alive (think of that as a seriously naff or particularly beautiful analogy). 


THE SEED.

We wanted the young people attending the Scribblers Festival to have a direct impact on the work that we are making for the project. Through their creativity we are hoping they will inspire us to devise a piece of theatre. We therefore hatched a workshop plan that would enable them to create their own stories from scratch. 
First we introduced the idea of stimulus and how this is often used as an inspirational tool. We then moved on to, what can only be described, as a giant game of consequences. For those of you who don't know how to play, we read out a title, person, object, location, date, time ect. and for each one of these they confer in their groups and write something down, accept every time they have written, they change paper with another group so you end up with a complete mish mash of jumbled words, we then ask them in their groups to create a story. We particularly encouraged them not to use any characters or narratives they were already aware of and to really use their imaginations and to think outside of the box, there are no limitations. The story then must be written down, there must be a narrator, they then devise a way of delivering the piece back to the other groups. Then with some serious crepe paper and pipe cleaner negotiation we not only have some of the oddest stories I have ever heard but some expertly crafted clothing and props. 

It is increasingly difficult in modern society to encourage children and young people to embrace their inner creativity, especially as we are now bombarded with screens, control panels, mobile this mobile that, we almost forget how to use one of the simple gifts we are so lovingly blessed to have as a child IMAGINATION, and even if we can remember what that is, society almost stamps out the need to ever use it. And I suppose, thats where we come in. 

So... The Seed has been sewn. The next step is to take or shiny red suitcase full of stories, into the rehearsal room and make some head or tail out of the madness...

Watch this space. 

Ciao, Georgina. x






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