Creative Partnerships
This page documents some of the many Creative Partnerships projects that I have been involved in the last 4 years. At the moment I have detailed only those from the last 12 months but will be adding more information in due course.
Inspirational Futures
St Edmunds Catholic School, Wolverhampton September 2009
I worked with Performing Arts Teacher Sarah Cole at St Edmund’s to design a small project around inspiring the students to think about their future journeys. We developed a sound and image DVD that used a range of quotes and powerful imagery found on the web. The film was regularly screened throughout the school.
The project culminated in a mass-balloon launch where every student and staff member wrote their own dreams, aspirations and hopes and attached them to their balloon.
Looking Forwards Alumwell Buisness and Enterprise College, Walsall November 2009
http://www.vimeo.com/7392156This project takes the familiar ‘diary room’ format as its starting point and aims to create a 9 screen video wall of moving portraits of many different pupils from across the Alumwell Business and Enterprise College. Each participating pupil is asked to sit for a simple portrait recording and then invited to discuss on camera their aspirations for the future, to reflect on school life, and consider their own sense of community.
To engage with this project was a real challenge for the 70 pupils who took part. To sit in front a large video camera under the full glare of studio lights and answer questions from a stranger is very difficult indeed, especially as there was little time for them to prepare their responses, and no time for any coaching, training or rehearsal. Our young people today are very image conscious and their sense of of identity and self-confidence is very much in flux. That so many were willing to take part in this project and allow their images to be shown to their peers demonstrates a large degree of trust and a willingness to risk what others may think of them.
The result is a collection of powerful and diverse portraits of pupils who share aspects of themselves, both through their words and simply sitting facing the camera. The Alumwell Video Portraits project is presented as a projection screen divided into a matrix of nine video images which randomly plays and fades each moving image. The project is computer controlled so the image sequence continually changes, never playing the same sequence twice.
