Our last forum welcomed artist, musician and facilitator Peter Cook. Peter lead a thought provoking session stimulated by GOLD! We listened to music, viewed pictures and played games before launching into the main activity.
I always find other people's games really interesting and have 'borrowed' 3 of Peter's already.
One great game for warming up was 'Pass the Clap':
Group size: 5 or more players Group age: 5 up (may need to be adapted)
1) Ask the group to stand in a circle
2) Start off a clap that gets passed around the circle from player to player, you can slowly build up speed. Make sure it is passed consecutively and no one claps too soon!
3) Introduce the two clap rule. If someone claps twice on their go the clap gets sent the other way around the circle (Peter advised us to only let each person use this once or it tends to get stuck).
4) If the group get the hang of it introduce the 3 clap rule. If a player claps 3 times on their go the clap skips the person next to then and jumps to the next player!
A great simple and fast paced focus game.
We continued the session exploring poetry and comparing our feelings on Gold to the actual award.
We really got into discussing how gold is a precious gift, showing maximum effort and dedication. It is also a gift that is passed on the next person. This is exactly one of the aims of the Arts Award, in creating young creative leaders to pass on their gifts to the next generation.
We discussed how the progression of Bronze, Silver and Gold could be used in this way to pass on experiences between groups. If you were running them simultaneously, in schools for example, you could have the groups delivering to eachother i.e. the taking part of bronze could be a project run by silver or gold particiapants.
Thanks to Peter's diversity as an artist and facilitator, we were easily able to grasp sing cross art forms from poetry, to drama to music. This really relates to the challenge set in Gold Award in participants finding new art form or challenging their existing one.
