Tikhtak

Over By Christmas Opening in Worcester Cathedral

This Thursday 30th January our new "Play in a Day" Over By Christmas will open at Worcester Cathedral working with 100 children from local schools. The play will run throughout 2014 commemorating the Out-break of WW1 and exploring and promoting peace and reconciliation. We will also run the project on 31st January at Worecster Cathedral and then on to Gloucester Cathedral in February. 

Over by Christmas - New Play for 2014

Scene Change Arts have started booking "Over by Christmas" our KS2  play for 2014 commemorating the out break of WW1. James Manning and Myself had an afternoon last week at The Royal Festival Hall putting together how we want the workshops to look and how they will fit into the day. We were both very pleased with the end result.The play will cover some of the major events of WW1 such as  conscription, the battlefield and trenches and of course the memoriable day when war stopped for Christmas. The events are carried by a simple story line of a soldier who is killed on the battlefield. Finding himself dead he cannot accept it "How did it come to this?"  A voice calms him and helps him retrace his journey until he is able to finally accept his end. We are also excited to be using actual, poetry, letters and images from the front line which we hope will bring the whole experience home for the children. Our first booking is at Worceseter Cathedral on 30th and 31st January. If you know a primary school who might be interested then they can contact me on [email protected]

Final DREAM day 2013 at Jubilee Primary Sch, Thamesmead.

Last week Scene Change Theatre took our DREAM Project to Jubilee Primary School in Thamesmead. James Manning and myself worked with two year 6 classes to learn out Martin Luther King's iconic "I have a dream"  speech, the civil rights movement and other dreamers who have changed the world. It was a great day working together and seeing how the children visibly gained confidence and stage presence as the day went on. It didn't go unnoticed by the Year 6 Teacher who assisted us throughout the day:

"All the children joined in and were keen to take part. They all loved the acting and it really built on their self esteem. Our Children benefitted a lot from the day."

This was our last DREAM day of 2013. We will be taking DREAM to Guildford Cathedral in January 2014 before we launch our new project "Over by Christmas" to commemorate the out break of WW1.

Friendships...

Friendships

 Friendships are from heaven above,
 They are full of love.
 They take and give to those most dear,
 And bring to life, a joyful cheer.
 For it's now a time to celebrate,
 Lift up your hands and celebrate,
 To God who loves us and gives us joy,
 And brings us doves from above.

 

For more poetry from Mum go to http://margogracecooper.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/friendships.html?spref=fb

My new "Testimonials page"

In the hope of getting more work I haved started a Testimonial Page on my own Profile work blog. Yesterday I delivered an RE day for the Barnabas in schools team on the theme of  "Who am I?" in a beautiful little primary school in Bramley, Surrey. If I say so myself not a bad start to my new page. Of course only the good ones will go up there :)

My Mum's become a Poet.

In 2006 my Mum was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and had to give up her home in Much Wenlcock, Shropshire to live in Denville Hall Care home for Actors in London. She faces many challenges day to day but poetry has become an outlet for her and she also hopes to encourage anyone else coping with disability. To see her poems click on this link.

Here is a little taster.

Ow!

Ow!

You’re treading on my toe,

Oh, Oh, Oh, No!

Where’s the rhyme? You let it go!

Now we’ll see all those busies in the bees,

Chase you up into those trees.

Get away from the garden and the fleas,

Bees don’t do all the work!

The others do! You quirk.

World to Rights & Manila DVD Books

Thanks to the hard work of my colleague Mike North, we have two books available to view on line and even buy from our 2009 World To Rights tour. The World to Rights Book shows pictures and comments from all the venues we visited throughout the year and the Manila Dvd Book shows the process we went through in making a DVD about Street Children in Manila, with no small help from Jigsaw. Either click on the links in this post to view them or click on the badges in the side bar. Once you are on the site you click on the front cover to turn the page and you can click a button to make the picture full screen.  Although Mike and I will be leaving CMS as employed staff at the end of this month we are continuing with a CMS project next year 2010 on the environment in partnership with Arocha UK. More will be revealed.

The LIFT Living Archive Opened! - A lesson for the church

This week I attended the official opening of the Lift Living Archive at Goldsmiths college. The archive moved from Lifts offices over the summer to be housed at Goldsmiths college, who have been encouraging various groups to explore it. The archive covers the work of Lift (London International Theatre Festival) from 1981 to 2001. My own involvement in the archive has been as a researcher for about 6 months as part of my MA placement. That meant delving into boxes, reading reviews and eventually creating an on-line trail on the Lift living archive website called Foreign theatre in a foreign land. (Pic above is Al Kasaba's  "Alive from Palestine,")

Lifts work in bringing top international theatre companies who perform in non traditional settings and with a whole range of creative approaches appealed to me because I could see how the vision of Lift could be applied to the church. Just as Lift celebrate different expressions of theatre both in and outside of the building so the church needs to learn how to flex the same muscle. Read Jonny Bakers take on preaching  "Throwing a grenade into the fruit bowl" for a bit of inspiration on this.

The evening itself was done in a very creative way. There was a room full of tables with people from Lift past and present as well as representatives from the various user groups. I sat with The Magic Me contingency. Magic me is an inter-generational arts organisation which had facilitated a creative writing project called penfriends among pensioners. In the middle of the table was a box from the archive and having put on white glove's we were encourage to explore and talk about the archive. There was a mic on each table to record our conversations. It really felt like a feast of Lifts history. To round things off we were then provided with a real feast and wine to boot.  A thoroughly enjoyable and inspiring evening.

Joining a Mission Net in Germany

Over Easter I will be attending a conference in Germany bringing together young people from all over Europe to look at the theme of Mission. I will be leading a workshop with Jill Ford from All Nations college on Mission and Creative Arts. At the beginning of our workshop we will set up some stations around the room showcasing some missional creative arts projects from round the world. I will be talking about World to Rights and trax16 but will also share about a version of The Apprentice run last year in South London to champion models of biblical leadership. Ammie, an Actor from Battersea came up with the idea as an antidote to all the bad press about youth and gun and knife crime. After an interview process 24 young people were selected and competed in two teams in exactly the same way as the TV version. The project was so successful that this summer she will be running a London wide version. I will also share about the work of Neema Crafts in Tanzania. With both of these projects and many more nothing could have been achieved without collaboration and drawing on different peoples skills and abilities. That will be one of the main objectives of our workshop as we work with youngpeople from all across Europe. Especially in  working together across borders.

Check out our Manila DVD extract on Youtube

In the Autumn 2008 the CMS Youth and Children's team set off with Tim Dendy (Freelance film maker) to make a DVD about the lives of a group of street children in Manila. We worked with a CMS mission partners in a street children's outreach project called jigsaw and worked with children who regularly attend this program. The experience was an incredibly rich one as we hung out with these young people over a period of 10 days. Their lives, struggles and responsibilities left our team feeling  humbled and inadequate to offer any real help or solutions. This is why the work of Jigsaw is so important as well as the aim of our World to Rights project to raise money for similar children's projects around the world. The DVD is due for official release in April but as a little foretaste you can see a preview on youtube.