Illuminate animation project

This summer the Illuminate group worked with animator Trevor Wollery and sound artist Tom Hill to write and create an animation inspired by objects in the Castle's collection of Chinese Silk. We used puppets of Chinese Opera characters as the basis for the tale and spent 8 days making props and scenery, animating the story and writing music and creating sound effects for the project.
The group wrote their own blog about their project which can be found at http://www.mubu.org.uk/living-in-silk/2011/08/and videos of our sound and animation adventures can be found on our vimeo page http://vimeo.com/user7453282/videos

The making of "The Dragon and the Heavenly Peach" from Illuminate on Vimeo.

Gallery Art group, Lakeside Arts centre

I've started working at Lakeside Arts Centre and am currently running one of their Gallery Art groups. We spent the first half term looking at the work of artist Inge Tong and creating pictures inspired by old black and white photographs.
We've also played lots of drawing games, including a kind of consequences game were we all drew different features and added them to a face....

Brookfield Hangings

The final images of the Brookfield hangings.
More info to follow!
But here's a taster of "Jonah and the Whale", created by the reception and year 1 classes.

Landliesfallow street painting

We spent 2 days with around 40 local residence painting a huge vine onto a disused carpark.
More information and photos here www.landliesfallow.org http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.202797936446023.51146.168382259887591&type=3

Branding and Logo project with Nottingham Castle's young people's group.

Have been working with Nottingham Castle's young people group to come up with a name and logo for the group. After a lot of thought about what kind of a group we wanted to be and time spent looking at examples for names and branding the group came up with the name "Illuminate", Nottingham Museum's Young Arts Collective. Illluminate was choosen as the group liked the idea that we would be sheding new light onto the Museum's collection of artefacts and looking at presenting and showing objects in a new way.
We worked with Simon Helliwell from Designsource on the logo. He led the group through a number of creative thinking processes to come up with ideas and designs.

Brookfield Hangings

Some observational drawings by year 1 and 2 at Brookfield. Half the group posed as characters in the story (in this case the people of Nineva from "Jonah and the Whale" and the sons of King Sagara from "The Birth of the Ganges") whilst the other half drew them. They captured some great expressions!

The drawings will form part of a series of hangings depicting religious stories for the school's yurt.

DRAWING ACTION- Campaign for Drawing Associates

Photos- Susan M Coles

I spent a couple of days in London with a group of 18 professionals working in the arts who have been choosen to become associates of the Champaign for Drawing.

These 18 cover the nine regions in England with myself and Helen Ackroyd, Art Education and Outreach Officer at Rufford Abbey Country Park, as the representatives for the East Midlands.

We spent the two days sharing ideas about how we use drawing in our own practice and roles and finding out more about the resources and support the Champaign for Drawing offers through publications and their website. We also had the chance to attend the Drawing Awards for the best Big Draw events held in October last year. A collection of exciting and inspiring ideas.

The aim of the associates is to develop and support the use of drawing in our area, our first role is to contribute case studies documenting how we use drawing in our own practice and with those we work with. This will document the breadth of activity to which drawing is a relevant and useful tool.

We will also be working to find out what support and training is needed in our area to help, inspire and encourage everyone to get drawing.

As part of landliesfallow (see www.landliesfallow.org.uk), I've been documenting the plants that are growing in disused green spaces around the Meadows. It's fairly slow work as I keep getting distracted by other projects but am hoping to create a large archive of drawings.

Brookfield stick puppets

Year Fives at Brookfield Primary worked incredibly hard to make these stick puppets. Their topic this term was the Titanic so each child developed a character who may have sailed on the Titanic. We had a collection of Captains and Stewards as well as some very glamorous first class passengers and a couple of thieves and stowaways. The group used stuff tights to create their puppet shape and learnt different stitches to sew noses and ears. They were also excellent at designing and making outfits for their puppets, some used patterns which I had created whilst others came up with their own creations.
We were all very proud of what they had created.