Magic, mystery and wild imagination
Fallibroome Creativity Week
13 - 18th February 2017
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| The Wizard of Alderley |
What a week that was! I’ve arrived at Sunday after 5 days (Saturday was caught up in remarkably sensible discussions elsewhere)of giants and aliens, adventurous children, terrible dragons, a wizard, a horse and a set of sleeping knights, 100 painting, gluing artists, an eagle…
It begins to read like a shopping list for an adventure tale
– but that would be another story
This week was Fallibroome
Academy’s Creativity Week (this year’s theme was “Magic and Mystery”) where
children from the partner primary schools all throw themselves (quite literally,
there is a lots of dance and drama) into days that set imaginations free and
running
Dragon 7
He arrives like curtains drawn across the sun
An exploding volcano of a dragon
His teeth are a saw,
Housed in the doom of his jaws
Eyes that glow as bright as lava,
Welcome you to the burning pools of his heart
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| first ideas for aliens |
Trips to the Whitworth and Manchester Art Galleries, rub
creative shoulders with adventurous science, dance workshops, Forest School and…I’m
involved as one of the artists so tend to get swallowed by my sessions and don’t
really build a sense of the whole thing other than the sheer scale of the
organisation. But it is wild and wonderful and the Thursday evening sees a
sharing event at Fallibroome where children and excited families fill the whole
theatre. This year we saw dancing cats (well done, Mottram!), an almost abstract
Wizard of Alderley (Nether Alderley – magnificent), the Wizard as a drama,
Peter Pan in 5 minutes (well controlled, Tinkerbell). There were sound experiments
on stage, a wonderful rescue of a stolen bride with fire breathers and jugglers
and dancers (just what every rescue needs) and Fallibroome’s own dance club
showed just what out of school clubs can offer determined young people. (Apologies
for anyone I missed)
Dragon 5.
Angry lightning,
A Lion’s roar,
A midnight evil,
Her heart a closed door
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| enchantment window in progress |
But for my sessions….we went from charming – aliens from the
book “The Loon in the Moon”, to mysterious – enchantment windows (you never
know what you might see when you look through – we hoped for unicorns), to magnificent
– a 3metre long frieze of Alderley Edge with contributions from 90 children, to
captivating…images of the storytowers will follow. I did lots. The children I worked
with did more. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and hope children did too!
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| a small but cheerful alien |
Then we hit the Bollinbrook Dragons….I make no judgement,
just post some of the reports below. The photos didn’t even get that far
Dragon 1.
Diamond bright eyes in lizard scale skin
Dagger teeth are butcher’s knives
And his breath scorches in a shotgun blast
And his soul,
His frozen soul would freeze your heart
Dragon 2.
She is a bright summer day until you open the wardrobe doors
of her heart
Bedrock bones and dagger teeth,
With cheetah stealth she’ll stalk you,
Watching from eyes as cold as glaciers,
Welcoming you into the cauldron of her mouth
And the dark abyss of her winter soul
And we ended with the Friday afternoon giants of Mottram. At
least we can end on some smiling faces. Don’t know what they are smiling about,
of course...
Giant
Our giant is a stormy night in winter
With arms that cling as tight and wrap as strongly as a
squid’s tentacles
His fingers prickles like cactus spines
He is an exercise machine of a giant,
Fast, strong, relentless,
Spring-loading his legs into trampolines,
He hammers people as nails into the ground,
But his hunger,
His hunger is a black hole that could swallow whole worlds.
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| at least some of our giants smiled! |
With many thanks to all the staff and children (and apologies
to the cleaners) of
Whirley Primary School
Bollinbrook Primary School
Upton Priory Primary School
Nether Alderley Primary School
Mottram St Andrew Primary School
And Fallibroome Academy!
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