Projects

Following the success of the earlier programme for primary school children talented secondary school youngsters from the Restormel area took part in a weekend of art workshops at Cornwall College St Austell recently, as part of a collaborative project to enable 12 to 15-year-olds to ‘find their passion’ and develop their academic abilities.

The workshops were organised and funded by Cornwall College St Austell’s Gifted and Talented Academy, Restormel Arts and Cornwall Learning and Extended Services.

Youngsters were given the opportunity to participate in Animation, Art, Music, Dance, Drama and Creative Writing workshops to allow them to develop their existing skills, while also experience applying themselves in new ways.

Simon Rickett, Gifted & Talented Lead for Cornwall College St Austell, explained: “The purpose of the activities were to challenge, stretch and nurture individual’s potential. Each of the students that attended had been identified by their teachers as having a gift or talent and performing in the top 5% of their cohort or have shown the potential to achieve excellence.

“All the students fully engaged in the activities and a great day was had. Feedback was positive with comments such as ‘awesome,’ ‘fun’ and ‘I want more.’ This is the first year that the Academy has been running at St Austell and we are very proud of its success and will continue to strive to provide all students with suitable opportunities to fulfil their personal potential.”

In the Art & Crafts workshop the students looked through different books to gain inspiration from other artists and then designed and made their own mark-making stamp.

M-MAD Media provided instruction in animation. Students designed characters and made them out of plasticine and used animation software and their own sound effects to produce two films telling stories of their own devising.

All the workshops were led by advanced skills teachers, specialists in physical theatre and professionals in publishing and the media.

In the music workshop the students wrote and recorded their own original piece of music and in the drama workshop they devised different pieces from only be given a title, such as ‘the green curtain’ and within a time frame.

Richard Turner, Chair of Restormel Arts, said :  “This is an important funding partnership for us. Working with Cornwall College and the other educational agencies we have established a programme of arts education that will continue to offer professional support to gifted young people in our local area and beyond.”

Dave Linnell OBE, Principal of Cornwall College, explained: “Encouraging gifted and talented students to develop their skills is very important to us at Cornwall College and something that we actively support and nurture. The academy has got off to a great start and we are proud of our collaborative relationship with the other organisations.  Our outstanding partnerships with local schools have recently been recognised by Ofsted and this is a great example of that.”

Multicultural Celebration in Cornish Schools.

Background

The pilot project Every Culture Matters was a great success and involved five schools hosting four highly skilled multicultural artists who worked with children and parents/carers in each school. The free workshops covered music/singing/story-telling/creative writing and traditional Chinese painting and involved artists from China, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

The project was funded by Extended Services and Restormel Arts and co-ordinated by experienced arts consultant Phil Webb.

Every Culture Matters II

Extended Services and Restormel Arts have developed their partnership to build and extend the project to the remaining schools in the South Restormel Extended Services area. Twenty seven schools will be able to apply for a free Multicultural Workshop Day and choose an artist to work with children (2 sessions) during the school day and parents/children in an after-school workshop.

ECM II Aims:

• To celebrate the diversity of cultural traditions from around the world through live performance, workshops and activities aimed at all ages within the local community.
• To encourage children, their families and communities to experience multi-cultural activities through workshops led by artist from other cultures.
• To raise awareness of racism and combat it by promoting and celebrating diversity and equality.

The project will run from January – June 2010. Feedback will be collected and an Evaluation Report will be completed at the end of the project.

The artists taking part in ECM II are:

Abimbola Alao – a Nigerian educational storyteller, writer and workshop leader who currently lectures at   University College St. Mark & St. John, (Marjon). Abimbola leads workshops on storytelling/African cookery and poetry/creative writing.

Chartwell Dutiro – is a musician, singer/songwriter, composer and teacher from Zimbabwe and talks about his cultural history and music and leads a music and song workshop.

Xiao Bai Li – is a Chinese artist based in Plymouth who talks about Chinese art and culture and leads a traditional Chinese painting workshop.

Denise Rowe - An African Dancer and choreographer from Jamaica and UK.

Following its success in the South Restormel Extended Services Area Restormel Arts is now seeking to collaborate in rolling out the programme in other schools in the South West.

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For further details contact:

Phil Webb, Project Co-ordinator This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or

Simon Pollard, Head Teacher at Carclaze Infants School.

Tel: 01726 74530 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.