Ludus in residence at Tallis

A massive thank you to the inspirational Ludus Dance Company for their fantastic residency at Thomas Tallis School this week. It culminated in a performance of their most recent piece entitled “Consequences” and performances by Year 9 and 10 dancers who had devised their own work in collaboration with Ludus.

An audience of parents and friends left the Sports Hall on Friday evening with beaming smiles and you can’t beat that!

Meeting Notes

Thanks everyone for another stimulating meeting. We seem to have about 14 people so far confirmed as participants in the Tangled Feet residency next week. This includes Tom T, Matthew, Tom W and Amber from the group. We may get some more volunteers tomorrow so I'll publish the final list to staff (and you) by Thursday afternoon. We discussed several ideas for the residency including the following:

• the need to document the various aspects of the residency using a variety of techniques and media
• setting up a Tallis Talk stream so that participants and audience members/witnesses can feed back their impressions
  
• the importance of showing the process of the work created
• the potential for showing work in progress before school as people arrive, at break and lunch times and after school
  
• the possibility of making and sharing food
  
• the possibility of using sound and installation work to engage audiences in unusual ways e.g. leaving messages around the building, in teachers' pigeon holes, on white boards at the start of the day, in year bases etc?
  
• the possibility of holding a special performance of "Home" on Friday afternoon for an invited audience (including students, teachers, governors and parents?)
  

We have agreed that Tom T, Tom W, Matthew and Amber will represent the group at the Creative Agents' Conference on Wednesday 1st July. I will need slips returned ASAP.

The format of our 1 hour input will be:

9:45 Arrive at the October Galleries and set up
10:00 Ice breaker activity - Idea Generator?
10:10 JN to deliver Keynote presentation about the work of the ARG and its impact this year
10:30 Questions from the floor
10:45 Activity - design the perfect Creative Agent
11:00 End. Visit exhibition.

Let me know if I've missed anything out or if you have some other suggestions for the two lists.
JN

Tangled Feet

Kat Joyce emailed today to suggest that we create a long list of ideas for the Tangled Feet residency. I said I'd put a post up here to get the ball rolling. So, what would you like to see happening between our volunteers and the Tangled Feet crew. Remember, the main theme is "Home", how we define it and what it means to us. The school is moving home within the next couple of years and folk at Tallis have a variety of feelings about the current home. Students will soon be moving to Tallis from their primary schools and Year 13 students have just left their Tallis home for university and world of work.

Also, it will be possible for groups of students and artists/performers to work on a range of projects simultaneously. For example, one group could devise a short site specific performance to be shown at lunchtime whilst another group could be preparing a soundscape and yet another might be designing an installation.

Please respond to this post with your suggestions for possible activities so that the folks at Tangled Feet can prepare themselves and we can all get hold of the necessary resources.

Finally, I think it's important to send a letter home to the parents of the selected 20 to inform them about the residency. Has this already happened or do we need to write something for Tuesday? Are we going to have reserves in case some people drop out before the 29th? Are you expecting to be part of the team who works with Tangled Feet? All this and more can be revealed in your comments.

Finally, finally, how do we plan to document the residency and evaluate whether or not it has been a success? Any thoughts?

Meeting with Kat Joyce

Friday's meeting with Kat proved to be very useful. She began by giving us a brief description of two projects with which she is involved. The first is as an associate director of the theatre company, Tangled Feat. The company specialises in physical theatre. They undertake long term collaborations which emphasise the values of trust and teamwork. They are currently working on their 6th Show entitled “Home”. This is their first project as a company. The piece is site responsive and was developed as an experiment which began life at the Deptford Albany. The show can happen in a variety of locations and gets richer the more people are involved. It is packed away into suitcases. One of the previous residencies was in a school in St. Albans where a performance of the play was improvised by 45 people. The company are also this year working with asylum seekers in Stockton and families in Kings Cross.

The second project is called "1 Mile Away" and is an exploration of a 1 mile radius area of South London. Unlike "Home" it is script based and the consequence of a collaborative workshop writing process with stories also being submitted to the project website and on Twitter. The emphasis is on non-linear and shared narratives and the final piece will be performed in local areas within the mile radius.

The discussion that followed explored the possibility that we could incorporate some of these ideas and working methods into our summer event(s) working collaboratively with Kat and Tangled Feet.

Discussion Notes

Stories and places.
Potential of the Tallis site – lends itself to site specific work.
Punch Drunk - a theatre company specialising in site specific work
dreamthinkspeak - another company who have utilised unusual locations for promenade pieces
Need to experiment with this kind of work to see what happens.
Could we use “Home” as a starting point? Do we start with Drama or can other activities be included – photography, sound, languages, history, geography?
Weeks 1st June, 22nd June, 29th June, 6th July then September residency possible
Changing perception of spaces
One event can cause a chain reaction.
£3650 + materials for a week residency
How can we get parents involved?
We need to write a brief – aims, budget, roles and responsibilities, scope of the project, partners in school
Could we use this project as an experiment to see if something even more ambitious could be created next year? A community opera? A huge site specific performance telling the story of Thomas Tallis School? A celebration of the 30 years on the current site and a way to say goodbye to the present building?

The group agreed that we would like to engage the services of Kat and Tangled Feet for a week long residency this summer with the possibility that this would be extended into the Autumn term. I agreed to write a draft brief which would be given to Kat before her meeting with the company this Wednesday. I'll try to put something up online for discussion today.

Thanks to Kat for agreeing to meet with us and inspiring us with some fantastic ideas. Watch this space!