Yesterday I was working with two schools groups that hadn't met each other before. They are going to be working together on a science and citizenship project about identity and diversity. There were thirty 14 year olds in the room and the energy was quite spectacular! We did loads of icebreakers and drama warm ups to try to get the groups to mix up and to be honest I think we could have done this for the entire session.
But we moved things along and got everyone working together to create an enormous paper canvas, then draw, write and ultimately make connections between each other using coloured tapes. The result was magnificently chaotic and reflected the energy that had been in the room and I think some of those initial 'first meeting barriers' had come down. It also looked a bit like a london tube map after a heavy night.
More pictures from last week's session at Sure Start in Norwich can be found here...http://spontaneous-communities.blogspot.com/2012/02/dough-island.html
The challenges of the after school ukulele club this week are mostly to do with freezing cold fingers. So cold in fact it hurts when you play. Not deterred by this we put our ukes down, turned the CD up and played our "air ukuleles" really wild!
We have been having so much fun playing the uke together. All the kids are complete beginners and over the last 4 weeks have made significant progress. We have been singing songs together, practising our strumming techniques, introducing new chords and of course doing the ukulele mexican wave!
It was really exciting this week at our Spontaneous Communities workshop as we had a really fantastic turn out. I think we had 10 families along which meant the energy in the room sky rocketed!
Mandy had planned a brilliant session using clay, toys and recycled stuff for the group to play with. A mad metropolis sprung up out of the ground with tubes, funnels, cars and all sorts of creatures all vying for a bit of space in the great clay mound.
For those that found the city life too hectic they took themselves off and built satellite towns. It was like watching medieval town planning in motion. An amazing day to document. There were so many good pictures from the day that I couldn't choose, so I have put most of them here in a slide show.
I had such a lovely time at Xmas tide this year. I spent the day goofing around with the E.L.F. The crowd at Wells were really up for having a laugh which made our elf-ing all the more fun and enjoyable.
I then had a quick change into the lantern lady! This year we kept the lanterns plain and I think they looked really beautiful coming down Staithe Street. This is the main shopping street in Wells and it is really narrow, heading down towards the quay. It looked magical with fire breathers, Tricks and Sticks drumming and the lanterns all parading towards the sea for Father Christmas's arrival.
Booom! provided some topclass fireworks for the crowds and then they all headed off to meet Santa. I snuck off home at this point, it had been a very busy day!
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