The first collaboration of the Youth Arts Network High Peak, We Make Our World brought together music, drama, movement and film into an interactive performance at the Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton.
The Background
Discussion at the Youth Arts Network meetings of February 8th and May 10th developed an idea to invite groups to join together and collaborate on a performance. Buxton Opera House offered to provide the Pavilion Arts Centre as part of their Children’s Festival, Octoberfest. Groups from across the district were invited to join the programme, and through the Grants for the Arts budget, High Peak Community Arts was able to fund a series of workshops with a film-maker/VJ, musician, and drama practitioner as Creative Director.
The timescale was tight, so a theme of Water was set by the Youth Arts Network, and a loose storyline came from workshops lead by Sian Dudley of Buxton Opera House, with young people at Harpur Hill Children’s Centre. This storyline was shared with the groups as they came on board, but with the understanding that nothing was set in stone.
The Aims
- To bring together at least 4 different groups of young people, from a range of backgrounds and places.
- To use at least 3 different artforms in a final performance.
- To bring the elements of performance from the different groups together into one narrative.
- To re-imagine the performance space at the Pavilion Arts Centre and challenge convention.
These are the groups who got involved in creating material and performing on the night:
ROFA Dreamscheme
I would say that I enjoyed it all, I would say the first thing I remember was the boats, because they were so big! And it was like if you turned round, you could knock someone over with them!
Julia Roos
New Mills School
We wrote down stuff to do with Water and we did little drama games to kind of like get some ideas and then we started to come up with the story… and then we kind of gradually got a story together and like worked, like we all put different things that we wanted to put in
Rosie
our thing we had all the physical theatre in it and stuff, which was really funny
Ben
Hope Valley College
we went through general plan and how we were going to… and where we actually wanted to go. We kind of split up the workshops as well. We had really little time, we had one section two of us doing percussion, and two of us doing music, and we kind of – so we kind of lead different areas, and swapped round.
Joss, HVC
Chapel Jam Night
I enjoyed working with the young people at Chapel Jam Night and I feel that the one young person who did join in with the performance found it very rewarding.
Laurie Agnew, Musician
Chinley
I was just swimming, in front was it green-screen?
Oh they edited it, to make it look like she was actually drowning in water, as opposed to just drowning in air.
Emma, Chinley
Children’s Centres
We enjoy making the lantern, it was very interesting and very messy! The children are looking forward to Friday, and going for a spooky walk!
Parent, Fairfield
The final week
In the final week there were three days of rehearsals, first the two drama groups and the two music groups, and second the drama and the film group.
It was in this time that ideas were shared and cross over between the groups was possible.
- Some of the ROFA drama group joined the Hope Valley College musicians, to learn their drumming parts, allowing them to play the instrumentals over the top.
- The lead character from the New Mills drama group was filmed to be edited into the pool of water projection made at Chinley.
- All the groups got involved in the opening scene of the performance, lying under the waves, or helping to round up the audience.
- Joss from Hope Valley College got involved with the track from Chapel Jam Night, as most of the group couldn’t come on the final week, they had to re-shape the track for the performance.
On the third and final day, everyone met at Buxton Pavilion Arts Centre from 2pm for dress rehearsals and last minute nerves.
We came in there was lots of drama rehearsals going on again, and then we sorted out some more drumming, like then everyone practiced the drumming bit, and I talked to Joe and Laurie, to ask them to do it too. That was fine – I just literally went “bah bahbah bahbah” for the rhythm, and then they played it – so they played it
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A lunchtime club at Glossopdale school – making a stop motion animation.Glossopdale Film Cuts Club started meeting on Friday lunchtimes in October 2010, in the Learning Support classroom. The group is made up of around 8 core members with others dropping in to help when needed, for instance giving feedback on our ideas.The project aims to provide activities including animation techniques, creative writing, acting, technical skills in camera work, directing and editing on computer.Employing a film maker who is experienced in community workshops, they have a good understanding of the issues the young people face. They structure the sessions to build on social interaction, peer support, team working and sharing a common goal.
In the early sessions we developed a storyline which included ideas from every member of the group, and worked on the groups dynamics.Squeezed into a lunchtime these sessions offered barely more than 30mins of productive time, so when we were given the chance to use a MediaBox bursary in December – thanks to Kim Johnson from Derbyshire County Council – we added a new session on a Tuesday afternoon with animator, Alex Kelly, from Stockport College. These sessions ran through to early February, with activities divided between fabrication of the scenery and characters, script writing, audio recording and shooting of the animation frames. Due to time constraints Alex took the footage, audio and chosen soundtrack and put it together into the finished film.
The group continued to meet on Friday lunchtimes to carry on with their Arts Awards, with Andrew working towards Silver, and Lee and Paige working towards Bronze.
