A rather overdue update!

Once again I find myself apologising for having left it so long since my last update!!!

Let me fill you in quickly on all that has been going on!

Over the past couple of months we’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to put a solid structure behind our community work which has led us into creating 3 strands for our projects:

* Dedicated Youth Provision
* Community-Based Learning
* Cross-Generational Programmes

Most of what we have been working on up until now has fallen into the dedicated youth provision category and we are now looking to branch out into the other two areas. Some exciting projects that are on the horizon include opportunities for parents to experience what GCSE classes in the arts are like, a project bringing teenagers together with the older generation to take part in a reminiscence project that will also teach the older participants basic technology skills (texting, emailing, downloading music and maybe even facebook!) and also the launch of our new Let’s Get Cooking programme!

So what’s been going on this past term?

We’ve continued our work with local junior schools, in the last half term I’ve been in Staples Road Junior School delivering the Victorians Drama Project which I ran last term at St John’s. The classes went really well as we learned about being a child in the Victorian era through creating the characters of a poor boy and a wealthy girl.

Loughton Youth Theatre has enjoyed its first term with two groups. I have continued to lead the younger group who started off working on a crazy story about a rat with no ears and a man in a purple hoody with pink spots, but from there we have landed in the middle of exploring what the connotations are of wearing a hoody and how people treat each other differently depending on what they are wearing. We have carried this into our devising project this term as we work on our piece called "Hood You Think I am?"

The older group worked with our drama tutor Oliver Miceli to devise a piece that they performed on April 8th as part of the Loughton Festival. It was a fantastic evening with great support from a packed audience. The young performers led the audience through a range of emotions to a poignant ending and then took questions from the audience and answered in character.

Chigwell Disability Group has become a creative haven on a Friday morning with painting, papier mache-ing, cross-stitching, scrunching and sticking and just about any imaginable art/crafty based activity. Our long-term placement student, Lauren Weaver, has been getting the normally reluctant participants dressed up in binbags and painting masterpieces while I have been working with Alison to create her epic animation “Killer Queen”. We are currently looking towards a whole group project to create a patchwork banner that shows the interests and skills of all the group members and we hope to hold an exhibition of all their work in the near future.

We piloted something a little different at Ignite this term, instead of our one-off monthly feature nights we have been running a 5 week short course in mc skills led by Youth For Christ’s resident MC, Mike Hojenski. We have been working with a group of between 4 and 8 to create lyrics and beats to make a finished recording. The group were fantastic and really poured their hearts into their lyrics and worked tirelessly on their beats even in the midst of technical difficulties or in Owen’s case, when I deleted the whole of his piece… I’m sorry Owen!

Then of course there was our Festival of Fairytales during February Half Term when 66 young people between the ages of 4 and 13 came along and took part in workshops based around the tales of Hans Christian Andersen. From Brave Tin Soldiers to Ugly Ducklings, Emperor’s New Clothes to Princesses and Peas, the young people threw themselves head-first into all of the activities and much fun was had by all!

Hot on the heels of the Festival of fairytales was our Easter Holiday programme to tie in with the Loughton Festival, again the drama studio became a hub of creative activity as we explored George and the Dragon, workshopped around the theme of Easter, street-danced and improvised! An action-packed week!

Also as part of the Loughton festival, a number of our students took part in a drama festival with students from Debden Park High School, both schools brought an array of monologues, duologues and an ensemble piece each which were judged by members of the Loughton Festival Committee and Felicity Hall, Arts Development Officer for Epping Forest Arts. Every performance brought something new and unique to the table and I most certainly did not envy the judges their task! Debden took home the trophies for monologue and duologue and Roding Valley won the ensemble piece... quite an achievement when we had blocked, learned and rehearsed our scene all with one day!!!

Today saw the last in the series of a short project I have been delivering to Year 5 at Alderton Junior School. I was asked to come in and assist teachers with making up some dance routines for the Summer Concert. The classes worked really hard to learn the steps, make up some of their own and then fit it all into an odd shaped performance area! Check out Class 5MC's rehearsal!