10

A FINAL THOUGHT. 

In the beginning of the project I was extremely jealous of the students who got to work with the patients with mental illnesses and the students working on despicable me- because our project didn't look as fun. But in the end I really enjoyed myself and I made good friends with people from other strands as well as getting closer to those in my own.

And I would very much like to come back next year and help out with the play. 

9

USA WORKSHOP 

Today Kez Michael and myself assisted Maddie a year 14 student in a workshop for some students visiting the Brit School from the USA. 

As we were just assisting we mainly joined in with the games but we were allowed to add games of our own. Including The Blind Bottle Game and the Knot Game which both got good feedback. We also had a chat about American and British stereotypes and swapped accents. It was just a fun end to the community arts term and I really enjoyed working with them. 

8

THE WORKSHOP

On Tuesday 8th July Tiz Nairac Kez and myself ran a workshop for the 6 croydonians that showed up. 

Before hand I was extremely nervous that no one or a very small amount of people would show up making it very awkward, and it was when they entered the room. It was still pretty tense when Simon was explaining a little bit about the project but it started to warm up in the first game. Everyone there was actually very friendly and open and they did enjoy a lot of the games we did. It was a diverse age group and because there was six people, not too many or not too little we managed to elicit lots of information from the via a spoken interview that we recorded. 

The attributes that helped me during that workshop were being confident and approachable because it helped create a friendly laid back atmosphere. However I did feel towards the end perhaps I was being too laid back and too informal as I kept going off track. 

I think too improve on what we did we would have needed to have a better workshop plan as we thought what we had written was sufficient but when it came to five minutes before the workshop we realised we had no idea what we were doing. And during the workshop we realised that some exercises didn't work where they were and we had to move them mid workshop which was a little messy. But overall I do think it went well. 

The workshop ending up in this structure. 

• Introduction by Simon.
• Introduction of workshop leaders by Angelica.
• Truth and Lies Game- led by Nairac because Lily wasn't in to do the invention game   and I felt that it was too soon to do the knot game because it was quite physical. 
• Splat- led by Kez to get the energy up. 
• Columbian Hypnosis- Led by Tiz to split into pairs and work with someone that you haven't in the group before. 
• CopyCat Game- led by Kez to work on concentration and working as a team. 
• Knot Game- led by Angelica, turned out to be quite funny and not too uncomfortable
• Tea and Toilet Break
• Small group interview on Croydon.
• End. 

7

MY ROLES

The definition of a participant liaison is 

• Communicating and cooperating which facilitates a close working relationship between people or organizations:

My role as a participant liaison included creating posters and flyers to hand out in Croydon and the general recruitment of Croydonians. 

Although I wasn't in for creating the posters/leaflets I was happy with the result of my peers.  

The leaflet is simple and clear with the most important info in another colour or bold for it to stand out. 

We began with going out as a group in Croydon the separating off into smaller groups to hand out flyers and put up posters. 

In the beginning I was extremely nervous as I hate talking to strangers and now I had to give them a flyer and convince them to come and take part in  workshops. 

It didn't help that people that flyer get rejected 8 times out of 10- but I believe it went okay as we did get rid of all our leaflets and had some interesting conversations. 

We asked the first person we handed the leaflet too, if she had ever been interested in acting. She was middle aged and I didn't think she would be but actually was, and she said it had always been a dream of hers to act but she didn't have the time to peruse it, so we gave her a leaflet. 

I've developed my skills in talking to people as I never would have been able too but now I can a little bit more. However I think I still need to work on my approaching skills as I highly relied on Ruby to make the first move.

Back at school I messaged 5-7 Croydon based pages including Age Croydon, Croydon Church Club and Croydon Choir- advertising the play and inviting them along. 

This was what I said. 

LOVE CROYDON?
INTERESTED IN TAKING PART IN A COMMUNITY PROJECT?

join us at the BRIT school
60 The Crescent
Croydon
CR0 2HN

for some fun filled workshops working towards a community play performed in a BRIT school theatre.
workshop dates:
Tues 8th July
5:00 - 6:30 OR 7:00 - 8:30
Weds 9th July
5:00 - 6:30 OR 7:00 - 8:30
Thurs 10th July
5:00 - 6:30 OR 7:00 - 8:30

WE HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE! REFRESHMENTS AVAILABLE!

However, after that I still think I could have tried to hand out more leaflets as we hadn't had many responses in the first few weeks and I think if I was to do this again I would push myself into getting more involved and work on my persuasion skills. 

6

MY ROLES

The definition of a workshop facilitator is 

• To plan and run a successful workshop.

My role as a workshop facilitator/leader included having discussions on how to be a successful workshop leader, planning a workshop and finally leading a workshop with people we had recruited from the area. 

First in groups we discussed what a successful workshop would be and came up with:

• Organised- because a successful workshop cannot be improvised and a lot of effort and organisation has to go into the structure and the core exercises of the effort. Including timings, exercises, aims, explanations. 
• Focused- If the workshop leader is not focused then the people attending the workshop will not be focused either. 
• Age friendly- You need to cater your workshop for different ages as, for example, pensioners will not want to play splat, and young kids may not be able to keep up with a more complicated game such as the invention game. 
• Creative- It needs to be creative to engage your audience. 
• Planned- To reduce confusion for you and for the people attending. 

We also discussed the attributes and skills needed to undertake a community workshop/project and we came up with: 

Overall you need a positive friendly attitude to everyone in the group. You need to show confidence and have authority but not undermine those that you are working with. With a community project a lot of the time it involves working with groups of people who you need to be empathetic for and not judgemental as they want to achieve the same thing as you. Punctuality and organisation are important because it sets an example to those you work with and sets the standard of how you want them to act. And most importantly, be open- as you can be working with all ages and all types of people and at the end of the day you are all working towards the same goal. 

5

MY ROLES

The definition of a Dramaturg is 

• a specialist in dramaturgy, especially one who acts as a consultant to a theatre   company, advising them on possible repertory.

My role as a dramaturg includes doing research in the Croydon museum and trying to discover some interesting information to use as stimuli for the community play. 

Some interesting information that I found out included:

• A man called Samuel Coleridge, who was a famous black composer in the 1890's. He played his first instrument- a violin as a child in Waddon and he went on the peruse a musical career at the Royal College of music. Throughout his time he faced very intense racism issues. 

• In the second world war, 5000 people were killed/injured and 60,000 houses were damaged in Croydon, due to air raids.

• The first black woman to work for the metropolitan police was Sislin Fay Allen; who came to England in 1962 and she lived in Croydon. There were less then 600 female police offers in Croydon up to the 1960's. 
• Also in the 1980's Croydon was very involved in gay rights and a man called Ray was involved in setting up a gay health group to help support people who were affected by aids. 
• And my personal favourite was a mens posing pouch from anne summers in the style of a crocodile in 1980- because it was hilarious. 

4

Notes on other community companies. 

LONDON BUBBLE- London Bubble is a community arts project that focus' on providing artistic skills to create theatre that involves ordinary citizens based on their own stories. 

AGE EXCHANGE- worked to help elderly people with their memory. They use reminiscence theatre, meaning they work with elderly people "to improve their quality of life by valuing their reminiscences and giving them opportunities for wider appreciation."

GRAEAE- Graeae is government funded by the arts council. They work on destroying the barriers that prevent deaf people and disabled people from working professionally in the arts. 

3

Today we had to present our presentations on the different community arts projects we had researched. My group was given cardboard citizens- and we had a lot of fun coming up with ideas in how to present it. 

This was the presentation that my group had got about Cardboard Citizens- a company that creates theatre with excluded people in society (eg homeless people, people at high risk, and people who feel displaced from society.) Although the presentation was informative on how to run a community project and had a good use of props. I feel like we should have included names of people who run the company. 

Which I know now is- 

Kate Winslet - CBE

Adrian- Artistic DirectorTony- DirectorBelinda- Trust Fundraising Manager 

Overall I did enjoy doing the presentations and learning about the different work going on in the community to do with preforming. Also it was good to work with people who weren't in my strand as it helped me get to know them better. Moreover, I liked the fact you can volunteer to help out at these different companies and I think it’s something I would generally be interested in. However, I think I didn't take the fact it was an assessment too seriously and I feel my group could have given a more rehearsed presentation and included more facts on the roles in the group e.g. dramaturg and leaders.  

2

In the second session we discussed what groups we would have involved in our project and how we would spread the word to them. We decided the advertisement would be in the form of posters and leaflets that we would hand out in Croydon and put up in well-known places in Croydon. We also agreed that using social media we could also spread the word further as not many people take notice to leaflets.

We wanted the groups to be as diverse as possible and of all ages. We discussed certain groups of people we thought it would be easier to target and came up with these:

·         church groups 

·         community centre 

·          elderly groups 

·         secondary schools  

·         BRIT kids

·         unemployed people  

·         primary schools

·         small local theatre companies  

·         students parents

1

This term the strands have been split up joined together to take part in various community projects. Our community project was recruiting citizens of Croydon to take part in a play to be put on at The Brit School. The tasks included in this are handing out leaflets and general advertisement to get people from Croydon involved and interested. Also we will be running workshops for those who are interested across three different days- which will hopefully develop into a devised play.

I think I will enjoy this term because it’s something different to what I have done before and it will be nice to work and learn about other strands; as well as people in the community.