“My creative journey started 13 years ago when I decided to leave my job and do a degree in art and design. I have always been creative and wanted to put my skills to good use.

My degree was the beginning of an amazing journey and whilst at college it allowed me to explore and develop a range of ideas, exploring materials, equipment and spaces. Mid way through the degree, I had started collaborating with artists and the public on several projects.  We made several sculptures using basic materials and I suddenly realised the act of creating something together was more special than the end result. I also discovered that people would often make dens rather than sculptures.

By the end of my third year, I had researched den building and how doing such things are fundamental to  child development. I also realised that building structures was a great activity to engage all ages.

I explored lots of materials and worked in various locations with different groups to gain as much knowledge and experience as possible. Once I left college I wanted to continue to develop my own practice, but  I could see the massive potential in working in schools to use den building to help children be creative, build confidence, increase motivation and resilliance and work as a team. In order to this, it was important for me to gain experience of working in education. So I got a job working at David Young Community Academy as a teaching assistant. The year proved to be very beneficial.

…………..And after that year I decided to buy a van, advertise and start working freelance in schools , building dens! The last 7 years have been amazing!!!   I have worked in over 600 primary schools, as well as many other educational settings, and I feel very lucky. The job is incredibly rewarding, watching others be creative, building and smiling. The den building continues to evolve by adding new materials and challenges.

My own artistic practice continues to develop around the theme of action, rather than object as art, as well as through exploring materials and spaces and working with many groups of people. Over the last seven years, I have been lucky enough to work with many organisations who have supported my work including Leeds Art Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, The Hepworth Wakfield, English Heritage, The Tetley, Leeds College of Art and Artforms.”

For further information about Chris and den building, please visit www.chris-harman.com     www.denbuilding.co.uk

Details about the Creative Project delivered by Chris, can be found here.

There have recently been some changes to the management team, with Luke Dickson as Artistic Director and Ammie Flexen as the new Company Manager/Producer. They are working hard to adapt to the ever changing educational landscape whilst remaining true to their core principle of putting children and their ideas at the heart of their workshops and productions.  We asked Ammie to tell us more about what they are working on at the moment.

“ In our latest research and development project The Cave, directed by Luke, we are working very closely with schools to understand their individual requirements and direction to support them in their response to the demands of the curriculum and funding cuts.

The Cave is based on the true story of the discovery of the now famous Lascaux cave paintings in 1940’s France. We will engage the children by creating stories, exploring the past and delving into worlds within worlds. Using The Lascaux caves as a starting point, we will engage children’s imaginations, inspire them in literacy, involve them in history and co-collaborate on journeys of wonder, challenge, resilience and change.  Five schools will be directly involved in the first stage of devising this production with creative and curriculum input from the head teachers and teachers involved.  A full scale tour of The Cave will commence in 2018.

Research is a valuable part of our work. The legacy of our years of experience is a mass of anecdotal, as well as ongoing academic evidence, of the impact on children’s learning and engagement. New and inspiring insights are expected from our partnership with Leeds Becket University and Burley and Woodhead Primary School in a whole school research project.

Research such as this, over many years, has revealed the value of our unique Alive and Kicking methodology, first developed by our founders, John Mee and Martin Riley in 1989. This is an immersive “mantle of the expert” approach which encourages creative freedom and critical thinking within clear supportive structures. The children make the crucial decisions, they solve the problems and are invited to step into the story with us, encountering and becoming characters at crucial dramatic moments – a method that works well with children and their teachers alike. In addition, we provide supporting educational packs that enable the work to be extended before and after our visit.

Alive And Kicking thrives with a team of expert freelancers for our range of productions and workshops. Martin Riley shares his professional expertise in writing and history and topic workshops ranging from Victorians, Celts and Egyptians, as well as lending a personal touch with his WWII workshops based on family diaries. As an extra special treat you can have a visit from two published writers as Martin works with our patron and award-winning writer Melvin Burgess on workshops bringing Viking folklore and history to life.

John Mee is currently developing Woman at the Top of the Mountain, available to schools from Autumn 2017. In these times of change, this socially relevant piece of work asks pupils to meet the mystery Woman at the Top of the Mountain who arrives at midnight. Why is she there? What will become of her? We ask the children to share in her adventure of where she has been and where she is going and participate in mystery, adventure, solving clues, inventing narrative, songs and creative writing.

As well as children and teachers, we support schools in encouraging parental involvement with our Parent Plus programme.   This enables parents to witness their child’s new found skills, share in memory building and positive conversations about school.  We invite a small number of parents into school during the day or run additional twilight sessions for much larger numbers.”

If you are interested in finding out more about Alive and Kicking, please visit their website:

www.aliveandkickingtheatrecompany.co.uk

The current ‘Artist in Focus’ is actually an organisation in focus, Theatre Company Blah Blah Blah (‘The Blahs’). They create high quality participatory drama and theatre with, and for, children and young people, their teachers and parents/carers, primarily in school settings.

We asked Deborah Pakkar-Hull, Artistic Director of The Blahs to tell us more about the organisation and what motivates them to keep creating and telling stories.

“Through our work we create rich opportunities for experiential learning using compelling stories that matter to young people. Our approach invites participants on bold, imaginative journeys that draw on what they know, feel and think and encourages them to reflect and question; engage in philosophical and ethical debate, make links between past, present, self and others; and imagine themselves and the world differently.

The Blahs have a long history of working with young people, originally in youth clubs, before moving onto focus on primary and secondary schools. For a long time, this work has been grounded in the strong belief that young audiences are discerning, critical, curious and capable of dealing with great complexity. In fact young audiences and participants can be far more demanding then their adult counterparts and will vote with their feet if something does not hold their interest or ring true.

The Blahs recently had a sense of the long standing impact of its work, when it reconnected with Francesca Collier. She experienced the Blahs work for the first time at Victoria Primary School in Leeds when she was a Year 6 student in 2001. To read more about Francesca’s story, visit our blog page: http://www.blahs.co.uk/conversation-francesca-collier/

What endlessly surprises and delights us are the responses of our audiences/participants – the Arabic speaking child who hears their home language spoken in a performance in the school hall and grows visibly taller amongst his peers; the elective mute who driven by indignation in a drama vocally challenges her teacher in role; the young person who is often disengaged from learning, who launches into an impassioned argument for saving lives as a survivor on an imagined shipwrecked raft.

We are also very lucky to attract some brilliantly skilled and experienced practitioners to the Blahs who enable our work to be both rigorous, high quality and engaging, and to have formed some strong partnerships both home and abroad with teachers, artists and organisations…reminding us of the real value of collaboration!  This includes having Bill Nighy as our patron!

The arts, if well planned, expertly led and accessible can offer real opportunities for children and young people to think, to imagine, to question and to act. In the context of the Blahs’ work this can provide young people with a renewed sense of creative and intellectual agency, an empathic understanding of other people in other situations (and hence a curiosity about the world beyond their own doorsteps) and refreshed skills in literacy, oracy, critical thinking and performance.”

For further information about The Blahs, please visit their website: http://www.blahs.co.uk

Get Out More runs forest schools, outdoor learning and community engagement programmes, helping people of all ages feel the health and wellbeing benefits of connecting with nature. Annie is the Managing Director at Get Out More but also still hands-on with delivery of Get Out More projects. These include a popular programme of holiday forest schools, outdoor learning and staff CPD sessions in schools, community walking programmes and workplace wellbeing sessions with businesses.

Annie trained at Jacob Kramer College of Art and Design followed by a photography degree at Nottingham Trent University. Her career spanned work in art galleries, programme management for Photo 98, the Year of Photography and at Artworks in Bradford, before an opportunity to train as a forest school practitioner presented itself and she realised she belonged working outdoors. Annie brings her creative background to her sessions, making use of seasonally available natural materials for play, learning and personal development.

Working in schools, Annie loves how enthusiastic children are about an outdoor learning day. “Children and nature are natural partners. It’s clear that they respond to the increased space and freedom of the outdoor environment and are inspired by the potential of the resources. A stick is not just a stick, it can be a magic wand, a sword, a horse or a drum stick – the options are limitless. Outside we can get hands-on with physical materials and make the most of the space, which really brings learning to life. We can pretend to be Roman gladiators fighting in the coliseum, sailors discovering a new island or recreate our own Great Fire of London by setting fire to cardboard buildings we have made. I see the children get excited about their topic work and know that they will carry a deeper level of understanding of the emotion and drama of events back into the classroom, which can be expressed through their writing and storytelling”.

Annie believes that every child should have regular opportunities to learn outdoors. “It isn’t just about learning, it impacts on children’s concentration, motivation and social skills too. Overtime, you really see children develop and grow through the creative challenges and co-operative working that outdoor activities provide. Sometimes I meet teachers who are cautious about working outside, because they are worried about behaviour or risk, but they soon see that it brings a new dimension to learning and engages pupils in surprising ways.”

You can learn more about Get Out More on the website www.getoutmorecic.co.uk or read Annie’s Connecting with Nature blog www.getoutmorecic.co.uk/blog

Writing and performing poetry took Andy from open mic nights, to booked gigs, to festival slots, and slam wins, to bookings abroad, British Council trips and commissions to write new work. The largest part of Andy’s creative training is now reading both fiction and creative writing theory.

Andy has been delivering workshops in schools since 2008 and thoroughly enjoys it!

“Part of the joy of working in schools is that every day, even after having taught 20,000 young people, somebody writes something that surprises me. Young people are generally better lateral thinkers than adults, so it can be because the idea or image is unexpected or surprising, but it can also be because the writing is honest and brave, or because it is beautifully phrased.”

More than technical expertise, Andy’s job is about enabling young people to take risks in their writing and performance by diminishing self consciousness and embarrassment. Andy encourages young people grow in confidence and own their creativity. Nothing comes out right first time, and Andy is happy to show how his first drafts of work prove this. But through discussion and facing difficulties, powerful poetry can emerge even from the most reluctant of learners.

Andy believes art and creativity is vital to human well-being. Countless studies show it, and Andy himself feels happiest when he has been making something. “It’s a chance for people to play, to question, to put forward a personal point of view. With seemingly less and less freedom in teaching and with less focus on the arts and more on business and enterprise, it’s imperative that artists go into schools.”  In Andy’s eyes, young people get to see that, whether it is poetry, painting or music, an art can be learnt and practiced; it is not some form of magic performed by art-creatures, but a learnable craft done by people like them.

To see more about Andy’s work, please visit his website: andypoetry.com

Alan’s main art practice involves painting and sculpture, but since graduating he has done a wealth of work in schools and community settings.   For anyone familiar with Leeds, an example of his public artwork can be found on Chapeltown Road, with others dotted around the northern region, often these pieces are 3D sculpture or bright mosaics. He has worked in numerous schools with children of all ages, providing pupils with experiences they may not have had before.   Many of these experiences have involved facilitating and supporting children to explore their own creativity, encourage their own ideas, and support them to create something amazing.   “It’s always great after a workshop in a school to hear the staff say that they didn’t realise that the results were going to be that good!”

When Alan was in school, he didn’t come across anyone who was making a living as a practicing artist, so this is one of the reasons why he sees it as important that artists work in schools: “they get the chance to meet an artist and to find out about what it’s like being an artist, which will possibly give them a role model for the future. This is something that I could have done with when I was going through education.”

After many years working in 3D, Alan has recently picked up his paintbrush and has created a number of paintings which reflect and explore the personal experiences he has had over the past few years, what he sees in Leeds and the world around him. This work has been exhibited in galleries in Leeds and Halifax. To see more examples of Alan’s work, please visit his website.

http://www.alanpergusey.com