Community Arts Blog

In today's community art's lesson, we went straight to the school's assembly and helped them to do a warm-up. I think doing this was a great way to get everyone together for the last time, and combine our ideas that we each included during our individual workshops with the classes. Furthermore, I believe that this was fun for the children, as there was a large group of us altogether, therefore the energy was much greater.
Later on we went back to our classes and I helped out to create some of the props that would be used for their performance. Helping out gave me the sense that their future production also has my input and work put in it, therefore it was all worthwhile!
At lunch time we got to hang out with the kids again, which meant learning more about them. Again, spending time with them is a great way for each of us to build confidence around each other, which I believe benefits for the workshops, because it seems like less pressure as we're all used to each other slightly more.
We were then given the opportunity to stay and watch their rehearsal of their performance which was great. From seeing this, I was able to see how the teachers and helpers communicate to the children, and help them in order to get the performance running. Some of the techniques were things that we used when doing workshops with them, like physically helping the children in the wheelchairs to do a dance, and also they used sign language, in order for the children to be able to copy them. I found this interesting to watch, as it was fun yet also beneficial.