Wednesday 31 August 2016

Aaaargh Dinosaurs! with Dommy B

Dominic who's been such a help on this project, reflecting on my writing with me and working with me on my performance, has a new show touring - and coming to Salford on September 23rd. I haven't seen this one but Dom's shows are well worth watching, with plenty of giggles for grown-ups as well as children.

Thursday 25 August 2016

Weeks 31-33

The posts are getting fewer and farther between and soon this page will be archived and replaced with this one: http://juicefromspace.blogspot.co.uk That's mostly because the main thing happening at the moment is me hammering away on the keyboard and learning my lines.

In the meantime, there are a few things you should know: there's a preview of the show at the museum on Wednesday 26th October, the teacher's pack has been drafted and is ready to be reviewed by Tania, my colleague at Sustain Education, and we've a filming day with Jason booked next month to create films of two of the poems to be featured on youtube.

So here are the details of that preview - also featured on the Juice from Oranges, Rocks from Space page. Please do book as numbers are limited.

Juice from Oranges, Rocks from Space
Wed 26 Oct
11.30am - 12.15pm & 1.30-2.15pm
A new poetry performance from Helen Clare, about exhibits from around the museum; where they came from and the journey they’ve made. There will be happy poems, sad poems, gory poems and fun poems – and opportunities for children to join in and create too.
Find out about the giant carved tusk, a moth, bloodworms, a man who was murdered and left to rot in a bog, a Greek God, Stan the T. Rex, and an ancient rock from outer space. 
For children aged 8-12 and their parents/carers


Friday 5 August 2016

Week 27-31

Today, as I chatted to Jenny on reception I stood feet, possibly inches away from the woman who unwrapped one of the mummies on display in the Ancient Worlds gallery. I ought to make that the over-arching metaphor of this blog, but in truth I mention it just because it's so unbelievably cool, and even though I don't really like the mummies I find it exciting in a way that's almost certainly uncool.

It's also been a notable day today because it was Debbie's last day. Debbie's been a crucial part of the project since the beginning helping to facilitate my needs and support the production of materials for the Learning Team. She's going back into school to work full time as a secondary Drama teacher. She'll be great! Good luck Debbie!

We met in the cafe for celebratory cake but Debbie was a bit green around the gills after her leaving do last night so Cat and I tucked into Red Velvet cake.

It's been a while since my last blog, not because I've been doing nothing but because we seem to have reached the stage where there's a lot of beavering behind the scenes.

We retrialled the Trading Words activity with one of our schools and edited that - so that's more or less finished. I've also worked on teacher instructions for turning the children's sentences from the activity into a class poem. And the Dinosaur egg activity is also now written up. Hopefully a member of staff is going to take a look at some of the design elements because that's really not my strong suit!

Dominic and I have been working hard on the script - which is now a script - with words and staging and everything. We had a really productive rehearsal session on Tuesday. I think I've got away without jokes - although there's a new dinosaur poem about Stan the T,Rex, which is fun, if not actually funny (I think it's funny, mind you, but that's not a guarantee of much!)

My next job is to make an axe so that I can brandish it during the Worsley Man poem about a man who was murdered, probably sacrificed sometime in the 2nd century AD and spent the next couple of thousand years pickling in a Salford bog. It'll be made of foam rubber and spray paint so no children should be harmed during said brandishing.

I also need to find music - I'm having music! Something exciting to start things off with a journeying theme and something electronic for the meteorite poem. It seems strange to accompany the 'oldest thing you'll ever see' with such modern sounds - but of course we do receive radio waves from space - check out this video from NASA with the sounds of space. Again, so cool I'm decidedly uncool about it.