Tikhtak

Down To Earth tour finishes in Clapham

It has been a year since Mike North and myself  were made redundant from CMS and were inspired to create Scene Change Theatre Company and  co-write the Down to Earth Project. Mike has gone on to other pastures as the youth coordinator for the Sheffield Diocese. But I have soldiered on and even though I considered throwing it all in during the summer I am glad I did not! This term with the help of CMS we secured funding from Westhill Endowment to take our environmental drama project to 8 schools in London. Four in Southall and four in Clapham/Tulse Hill. Yesterday we finsihed in Clpaham of all places! Check out write ups from each of the projects, with pics to follow on the Down to Earth blog.

Sophia network hosts an article about my work with Tender.

Jenny Baker who runs the sophia network blog (recently winning the title of the best Christian blog) asked me to write something about my work with Tender and using drama to address domestic abuse with young people. You can read the article by clicking on the Sophia Network link.

Sharif Hassan's Reunion at Heathrow Airport after his release

Sherif Hassan Abdelwahab Mohamed was going to Cairo to take his new wife to meet his family and comfort them after the death of his father, when for no reason (He is a Christian) he was detained and arrested. Here is the happy picture from yesterday evening of Sharif back in England with his wife Emma. Not sure if the Costa cup has any significance!It is amazing that in just a few days scores if not hundreds of letters have been written to Embassy's and Mp's and through the potent combination of prayer and social media this campaign has come to a happy conclusion. But the story is not yet over as the website reports: "There is still good reason to write letters to call the country to account!"  I am sure there are many others in similar situations to Sahrif. For more pics and the full story check out The Release Sharif website.
 

 

Regenerating communities in London through drama.

Over the last year Scene Change theatre has worked in cathedrals countrywide to explore environmental issues through drama and to find simple and creative ways to care for the planet. This project has given us the opportunity to profile the work of A Rocha UK, based in Southall, who have championed an environmental park called the Minet Park, by regenerating an area of derelict land.
This term we have teamed up with A Rocha workshop leaders to take Down to Earth to schools in two areas where A Rocha are running regeneration projects, One in Southall and the other in Camberwell. While, in the play the schools learn about environmental issues from around the world, this term they will also be challenged to connect locally to A Rocha regeneration projects on their doorstep.
This project will go to 8 schools, four in Southall and four in Lambeth over the next few months. It has been funded by Westhill Endowment, with the support of CMS and will give A Rocha the opportunity to follow up and give young people the tools to be agents of regeneration in their community. To see photos and follow this project click on our Down to Earth blog.

Last "Down to Earth" project on Cathedral tour for 2010

On Thursday we performed our last Down to Earth performance in a Cathedral and for  some reasonour year always seems to finish in Worcester. Perhaps this was the right place as the Education officer Sue Adeney sowed a seed in the winter last year to consider doing a project on the King James Bible. Well it is happening in 2011 with The King's Quest. We have already got quite a few bookings for the new year and beyond. I will blog more about this in due course. Check out the write up and pics from the day on the down to earth blog.

50 Years of Guildford Cathedral

 I am working with Guildford CathedralEducation Centre to create a play that local schools will perform to commemorate its  50th birthday. It will take place over 3 days in January 2011 and today we spent time looking at 5 decades of local history in order to come up with a good title. At the moment the favourite title is "Brick in the wall" It relates to the story of a lady called Eleanora, who single handed led a campaign after the second world war to get people to buy a brick for the cathedral. People could then sign the bricks. It was a success and it was not long before enough bricks were bought. I encouraged Charlotte, one of the Cathedral team to start a blog and she did and called it Guildford Cathedral is 50

Curating Worship book launch

My good friend and former CMS colleague Jonny Baker had the launch of his new book "Curating Worship" at the scooter cafe in Waterloo on Thursday night. I made a joke as I left that I will hide the book catching the tube home as its tube theme might draw peoples attention to me.I ended up reading it as I traveled and even was brave enough to take this photo as I waited for my train!! Jonny's book is trying to challenge the church to think a bit differently and creatively. Instead of going along with the models of church worship we are used to with a leader at the front directing/leading others. This book is very much an insight into Jonny himself. I always used to say he had the power of delegation, but you know what I think I meant was the power of curation. He has actually not written much of the book himself! He has curated a book about curation! His definition of it sums it up: "A worship curator makes a context and a frame for worship, arranging elements in it. The content is provided by other people." This is certainly a good educational model of involving the participants in their own learning. Often in worship we can feel like an audience passively participating with our mind wondering off to other things. I am the kind of person who likes to do things and be involved in a more practical way so the ideas in this book appeal to my kind of personality/learning style. It was great to meet Martin Poole who tells his story in the book. He is responsible for turning beach huts into a living advent calendar over the last few Christmas's. I love this idea of taking something known to everyone and using it n a creative way outside of the four walls of the church to present the chrisitian message in a new and creative way. I'll read on!

From a Canadian summer to an English Autumn

After spending 3 and half weeks in a sunny Canada coming back to a rainy England was never going to be easy! We spent a lot of quality time with family and have taken too many photo's to mention. This one of Zara was one of my favourites!While in Winnipeg I enjoyed Playing Wii in the basement with Michael my nephew  as all the other children played around us and this theme continued in thunder bay with a few late night sessions playing Fifa on PS3 and watching Dvd's. It was great to spend time with so many faces that we knew in a foreign country and we travelled about everywhere in convoy visiting various sites and eating, chatting and singing together in the evenings. After a week in Thunder Bay we drove 10 hours back to Winnipeg and It was good to see again the Old Bill in Winnipeg and his daughter Christine. He is a pastor inan inner city church who I had worked with in 2006 on a trip with Jonny Baker for CMS. We joined him at Central Park, a community rejuvenation project that had turned a space used for drugs and the like into a community space with an all weather soccer pitch in the middle. Nice!! You might think that this photo is of Bill and Christine with a bear...But no that's me!! Arriving back in England has been quite challenging. Irfana has a month of work left before she finishes her time as the youth and children's worker at Holy Trinity Church, which means within a year we have both been made redundant. It is a time of opportunity with no particular ties to the area any more we could go on an adventure! But it will also be a challenge to find work to pay the bills. Watch this space! At the weekend it was nice to take part in an impromptu street party in our neighborhood and get to know people who live on our estate better. Zara got her face painted and people took to the streets and cooked various food for all to eat for free. Caribbean, Indian, Greek... I was in heaven. With a bit of food in the belly I feel ready for the challenges ahead.

Creating a Youth theatre with 3 taster sessions

On Thursday I finished a project with Green Shoes Artsto create a Youth theatre group on a housing estate in Dagenham. Check out the 3 week  session we taught on Tikhtak's toolkit blog. We started with just 4 girls and yesterday we finished with 11, two were boys! Everyone was so keen to throw themselves into every exercise we did and they produced some really good scenes. In August they will take part in an intensive week long programme and then the Youth theatre group will start up for proper in September. It will culminate in March with a big performance about the community

Schools drama project at St Pauls Cathedral

Yesterday I visited the education team at St Paul's Cathedral to discuss Scene Change Theatre Co  putting on a schools drama project in the Cathedral. It certainly is an impressive space and with the hundreds of tourists milling around will provide an immediate full house. The project will look at the story of the founding of the King James Bible as it will be its 400th anniversary in 2011. The title is still a work in progress which I hope to have decided on by the end of the summer. St Paul's Cathedral houses a Tyndale New Testament bible translation, which was a precursor to the King James version. It dates from 1520 and only 3 known copies exist. When they first came into print against the wish of the King and Catholic church they were publicly burned in front of St Paul's Cathedral. Tyndale was eventually imprisoned, Strangled and burnt at the stake as a heretic in 1536. His dying words were "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!"  Well his prayer was answered as King Henry Viii accepted the final version and this paved the way for the official  King James version some 70 years later.