MineCraft gives you SKILLS - Summer Family open day

Use your Minecraft skills towards your Arts Award with this fab summer programme:

http://www.meetup.com/EPIK-UK/events/222113344/

An exercise to begin the Arts Award

In our last session Vicki introduced the forum group to an exercise she uses regularly with groups of all sizes, ages and abilities. Its great at identifying skills and areas of interest that the participants have. It is also is a way of identifying an individuals arts challenge that can be used in Bronze and Silver and other levels. When coming to evaluation it is a point to look back on a develop progress. The best thing about it is that its fun!


Materials needed: Something to draw with, Paper

1) Ask the group to draw around both their hands on one side of paper. If they have large hands they can overlap!

2) In one of the hands ask the group to write/ doodle/ draw positive things about them selves e.g. skills, their personality, what they enjoy. This can sometimes be an exercise within itself as some groups find it very hard to say positive things. You can suggest things to encourage them by telling them your own or ask the to ask someone else in the group to give them a positive point they've noticed about the person. Aim for a minimum of 5 things and 3 of those to be arts related.

3) In the other hand we create wishes for ourselves. Try to not call this a 'negative' or 'bad' hand. Changing the language to 'I would like to be a better listener' is more proactive than 'I am rubbish at listening'. Again make sure some of these are arts related.

4) The final stage is to discuss your 'hands' and find challenges. How this is done depends on the group; some groups may be willing to share with everyone, others may want to work with a partner or you on a one to one basis. The idea is to identify a goal or challenge for the individual that they feel comfortable about. This may jump out of the I wish hand, or it may be a combination of using skills they are already good at to achieve something new. For example many of our participants are great at drama but want to take it further by writing a script or directing. Others have combined feeling comfortable in the group with a new skill such as photography and photographed the group rehearsing and performing.

Enjoy the exercise and don't forget to revisit the hands when evaluating and reflecting!

Artsbox, Objects, Stories and Puppets

In March we had two forums so we also welcomed Peter Morton, from Knuckle and Joint Theatre, to the second session with his great Puppetry workshop. Peter demonstrated some fun and interesting tasks on how to transform an ordinary object into something creative and imaginative.

Rose, from Artwork, provided everyone with fliers and leaflets and a look into the new 'ArtsBox' concept. ArtsBox is an online dropbox service whereby you can link and collate any photos, videos or imagery to portfolio's, viewed by a Moderator.

Please see our earlier post on signing up to Artsbox here

Peter lead the creative activity...

Using Objects:

1. Pass around an object, eg; an umbrella, a book, a shoe
2. Each person had to respond with "This is not a ...","It is a ..." In which people were invited to think creatively of a different object instead, i.e; "This is not a shoe, this is a ship, sailing in the sea".
3. Change the object for new ideas.
4. Pass around again without repeating and of the previous objects already mentioned.

Secondly, Peter split the group in two to create our very own puppets, simply out of a mug and a dish cloth. The key was to:

1. Accentuate the body stance with detail to movement and breathing.
2. To establish a point of focus on the puppet from the puppeteer/puppeteers. This enables the audience to focus on the puppet.
3. Add an objective; a daily routine for the puppet to move to i.e. getting out of bed, getting dressed, etc.
4. Change the object and do the same.

The outcome of the sessions were great and we look forward to welcoming everyone to the future Forum sessions.

The Gift of Gold

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.