August 26, 2016

Continuing on from our project during May Half term, The Arts Excite returned to Parasol to work with the children on the Parasol Puppet Project.

This time around Kirsten introduced the children to a story called The Broken Bird, which the children adapted to create a performance using the puppet theatre we commissioned.

Once the children were familiar with the story, we began creating scenery and creating the additional bird puppets we would need for the performance. This project was a cross arts project, as the children were able to use iPads to create films that would support the performance of the play.

We spent two weeks during the summer holidays on this project which concluded with a final performance and sharing for parents, staff, funders and other members of the community. The performance went really well and the children worked extremely hard on it. You can see the performance by clicking on the video link.

This was an Arts Award project and children were working on both Arts Award Discover and Explore Level.

This project is supported by Oxfordshire County Council with investment from Artswork Ltd, the Arts Councils South East Bridge organisation.

(Copy of image to be used)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igwtxqU4sTM#action=share

June 7, 2016

Early in 2016 The Arts Excite secured a contract to deliver in partnership with an Oxfordshire provider, an Arts Award project for children with disabilities. The partner organisation we teamed up with is Parasol Project.

One of the things that attracted us to Parasol project was their ethos on inclusiveness, and how their provision and activities are designed to engage both disabled and non-disabled children and young people at the same time.

Parasol had recently conducted a survey with the children that access their holiday clubs and discovered that many of them were excited about puppetry and creating their own stories, so we recruited Kerstin Friedrichs a local artists who could teach the children how to make puppets and support them in developing a story they could perform to parents and friends.

We developed our project so that we would begin our delivery in May 2016 half term with a weeks worth of puppet making workshops, where the children would create their own puppet characters and begin to explore a story which we would come back in the summer and develop over a two-week period.

Our plan has been to start the children off on Arts Award Explore and focus on support as many as possible to achieve this award. As children do not attend all days run on the holiday club, we are hoping to still support those who have been actively involved but cannot commit to the whole project, in achieving Arts Award Discover.

During the half term period we delivered 4 project days of activities and created 7 puppet characters that we can use in our performance. We have also commissioned the build of a puppet theatre, which will remain at Parasol to help us sustain the project once the funding comes to an end.

Please revisit our project page in the summer where we will have an update on part two of this exciting project. This project is supported by Oxfordshire County Council with investment from Artswork Ltd, the Arts Councils South East Bridge organisation.

September 1, 2014

During the summer of 2014 The Arts Excite delivered its first summer programme of workshops for young people in Slough.

With help from creative practitioners Nikkita Da Silva, Lucy Shaljain and Robyn Thwaites we are able to deliver workshops in Photography, Dance and Drama.

Our approach to the summer programme was quite different in how we usually operate and organise our projects. Usually we would partner with a local community group or charity and base a project around that which would benefit the wider community. This time we just wanted to give young people the chance to get involved in our workshops simply for the fun of it.

Working over four days the young people involved, devised an original piece of drama, created two digital photography exhibitions, and invented a new dace routine from scratch.

The summer programme concluded with an end of programme showcase at the end of the week, which was well attended. Young people who took part in the project were all presented with attendance certificates and their Arts Award certificates are in the post.

The video beside this write up is a collection of images taken from the programme.

Enjoy!

June 28, 2014

During the summer term of 2014 The Arts Excite ran an after school Music Technology Project for year 8 pupils at The Westgate School.

The project brief for our creative team of pupils was to create a music CD of their created music by each person or duo submitting 1 track each.  Over the course of 6 weeks the students worked alongside Music Tech specialist Glyn Allen who supported them in using iPad tablets, Garageband and other apps to create their own music.

The CD will be used as part of a music showcase to celebrate the musical talents of young people in Slough at the opening of the new learning curve in late 2015.

Students involved in this project said

“This is EPIC!!! And it is also very interesting.

“This is going to be fun.”

“This has been new and exciting and has given me a better idea of technology on music.”

“This has been an amazing project.”

“Very good, very innovative, very creative.”

Students involved in the project were all working toward achieving Arts Award Bronze. click the play button to listen to what they created.

(Below is a link to soundcloud, I would like the player embedded on the page please)

https://soundcloud.com/the-arts-excite/sets/project-three-beats

April 30, 2014

Project Two: In Focus was a photography project that was designed to teach young people the basic principles of photography in order for them to create a digital slideshow of portraits of service users at Age Concern Slough.

The young people involved in this project spent 7 days working with The Arts Excite.

Day 1 we explored cameras, how they work and the fundamentals of digital photography including Aperture, shutter speeds, focusing, ISO.

Day 2 was image composition, looking at portraits and how to take good images.

Day 3 we visited Age Concern Slough and the young people.

Day 4 we visited David Bailey’s Stardust Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery to draw some inspiration from a famous photography.

Day 5 we revisited Age Concern with our new found knowledge from the exhibition and took some stunning photographs.

Day 6 we edited our pictures and created the slideshow.

Day 7 the young people put on their presentation to show off their work.

Project Two: In Focus, was funded by Arts Council England, JMD Media Lab, and Slough Borough Council. Young people involved in this worked toward achieving an Arts Award Bronze qualification

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WSy6bN6_nI#action=share