Creative Company

The regular sessions have started again in Hadleigh, alternating between the Sue Ryder Synergy Café at the Ansell Centre on a Thursday morning and the Together Tuesday group that meets at the Leisure Centre on Tuesday afternoons.

We continue to work with artist Sara Harrington who has used a variety of new techniques and approaches with the participants – with the additional benefit that several of the volunteers and facilitators have used them, too. As one commented the other week: –

“It’s been brilliant – I’ve used the techniques introduced by Sara and I’ve even developed them so that people were cutting out objects and then painting in the background. It’s given me loads of different ideas for doing art in the other [Synergy] Cafes I’ve worked in … it’s been really useful.”

Using aboriginal art as the starting point, participants created their own image, using a variety of mark making to add texture and form to their picture.

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Volunteer opportunity

We are looking for Creative Volunteers to support the Creative Company sessions in either Hadleigh, Stowmarket and/or Bury St Edmunds.

Creative Company is a project for adult family carers, developed in partnership with Sue Ryder. A series of taster sessions, followed by a programme of regular sessions, are all led by a professional artist, after which the intention is that a self-supporting group will continue to run monthly art sessions, supported by the Creative Volunteer.

Basic training will be given; volunteers are encouraged to attend sessions to gain experience, and other resources will be available, offering continuing support.

If you are interested and would like an informal chat, please contact the Project Officer, Candida Wingate by calling 01986 873955 or by emailing [email protected]

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Clown Round

It has been a busy few weeks for Clown Round, with sessions at hospitals and hospices across the region. The Clown Doctors have been sharing all the new skills they learnt at the play day with the wards, bringing silliness and laughter to those who need it most.

At the Treehouse Hospice, Ipswich a few weeks ago, the Clown Doctors where given an amazing opportunity to invite a photographer to document their work. We are immensely grateful to the hospice and the families who have given us permission to use the photographs we gathered that day, helping us to show the difference Clown Round makes to children’s lives.

You may have also heard us on radio Suffolk on Monday morning, spreading the word about the brilliant work Children in Need do to support their projects. Without Children in Need, Clown Round would not exist, so make sure to dig deep this November when the appeal goes live.

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Our Place

We went along to The Partnership in Care’s ‘Strictly Come Dancing Annual Awards’ last week. There was an array of wonderful performances from residents and staff – from the hand-jive to the waltz and a zombie/belly-dancing dance off – the creativity was brilliant and a lovely day was had by all.

In the lead up to the artists’ residencies at the The Partnership in Care (TPiC) care homes, we are currently planning in-depth training for artists and staff. We are also developing a Diagnostic and evaluation framework for the project.

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Suffolk at Play

It was lovely to see so many of our Suffolk at Play participants at the Museum of East Anglian Life last month, where we gathered for the Suffolk at Play Grand Celebration.

Participants from Bury St Edmunds, Felixstowe, Lowestoft, Stradbroke and Stowmarket joined us, to view all the videos and create the final Suffolk at Play poem, with a little help from Dean and Caitlin.

There are now subtitled versions of the videos: you can watch them online here.

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Rock Up

The entire Rock Up team attended a training day at the Garage in Norwich this month – and are now qualified as advisers for the bronze and silver Arts Awards. The Awards are nationally recognised qualifications that help young people develop their creative and leadership talents – and we hope to be delivering the bronze level Award at Rock Up over the coming months.

Hard on the heels of the training came a film crew, commissioned by Suffolk Community Foundation to create a film about some of the projects supported through the Foundation.

The Rock Up participants were brilliant and totally unphased by having a film camera trained on them whilst a photographer lay prone on the floor taking shots of some fancy bass drumming techniques and a journalist scribbled shorthand notes in her pad.

It was all great fun, and we can’t wait to see the film.

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JumpstART!

Since the last newsletter we had been making huge progress with our ‘Musical Words and Pictures’ module.

In Lowestoft, artist Kasia Posen has been working with the students in creating some amazing suitcases (following the theme of travel) and the students have had some interesting discussions about what they would pack for the journey. Don’t want to give too much away at this stage as you will have to see the performance!

To inspire us we had a trip to the Lowestoft Transport Museum at Carlton Colville. We all had a great time riding the trams and buses and Penny, one of our support workers, had all the students singing on board.

In Ipswich, everyone has really settled into the module and they are all coming up with some great ideas on the theme of journeys. They had a session with artist Caitlin Howells and worked together making some willow ‘vehicles’ to travel on; Rocky the Horse, a magical bus and the “Happy Flappy Raspberry Machine” will all be appearing in the film presentation in December! We had a trip to the Ipswich Transport Museum with sketch books and followed a scavenger hunt set by poet Dean Parkin – followed by a cup of tea in the cafe.

The students in Bury have spent the last few weeks creating fantastical songs with Dean Parkin and Maurice Horhut – we’ve been exploring the themes of magical transport and journeys to far away places, with songs about mermaids and under the sea adventures. Caitlin Howells has worked with students to turn their transport into giant 2D willow structures and Gareth Bayliss has used illustration to imagine the lyrics into things that can be animated in the final film.

We’re taking part in the Bury Big Draw event with the theme of ‘Powered by Steam’. Students created a group drawing on lining paper of giant steam powered inventions. This will be on display at the Apex from 11th October.

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Waveney and Blyth Arts Sensing Nature

Although this is not connected with Suffolk Artlink we thought some of you might be interested in this.

Two Sensing Nature talks were held on Sunday 2 October at Halesworth’s The Cut that explored the nature of sound and sound in nature. Both were brilliantly live audio-described by BBC Radio 3 regular Louise Fryer. Dr Matthew Moreland, Lecturer in Phonetics from the School of Health Sciences at the University of East Anglia, artfully explained how people produce, use and hear sound. Then award-winning author, naturalist, and environmental activist Mark Cocker talked expertly and poetically about how local birds, insects and other wildlife make and use sound. Wild song sound recordist Geoff Sample, rounded off the morning with recordings of local creatures’ songs and calls, interactions, gatherings and rituals as they go about their lives, through the changing seasons.

Composer and vibraphone player Jackie Walduck is Artistic Director of ‘Tactile’, a sextet of world class Visually Impaired and sighted musicians of whom composer, guitarist and gamelan player Adrian Lee is also a member. Thanks to Waveney & Blyth Arts Chair, Nicky Stainton’s, successful bid to the Arts Council for a lottery grant, Waveney & Blyth Arts will be able to commission Jackie and Adrian to compose new music inspired by the sounds of local nature.The new music will be performed to groups of fifty walkers as part of a sound trail. It will be played outdoors next July along a wheelchair accessible walk in the Thornham Estate near Eye and Diss. ‘Tactile’ will play the new music together with Visually Impaired singers and musicians we want to recruit from Norfolk and Suffolk.

So, over lunch on 2 October, Waveney and Blyth Arts sat down with Adrian, Jackie, Mark Smith from their Project Partners the NNAB – Norfolk & Norwich Association for the Blind – and Amy Nettleton representing the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, and Visually Impaired theatre company, ‘Unscene Suffolk’, and started planning the music ‘taster’ workshops Jackie and Adrian will run in East and West Suffolk, Ipswich and Norwich next February.

So, if you know any visually impaired singers or musicians you think might be interested in bringing some exciting new music to life please ask them to contact Jan on 01986 895227 or email [email protected]

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