Weebly

One of the suggestions for actions from the Leadership Team meeting was that we investigate ways of sharing best practice with regard to successful creative learning strategies as way of convincing colleagues, students, parents and members of the local community about their value in 21st century education. Consequently, I've been searching for free website creation tools online so that we could make a site dedicated to sharing this information. I came across Weebly this evening and spent about 30 minutes creating a 4 page site structure and Home page introduction. I was really impressed with how easy it was to structure the content and manage the various elements of the site. It seemed to offer a lot of flexibility in terms of design and I really like the hover previews.

How do you feel about the idea of setting up a site for sharing lesson plans and projects featuring creative learning strategies? Do you know of any better sites than Weebly for doing this? What kinds of features and structure should the site have in order for it to be useful?

Online collaboration (continued)

As you can see, our request for the Leadership Team to provide us with feedback about our recommendations and draft manifesto has resulted in a flurry of notes added to the online document via iWork.com. Please take the opportunity to add your own notes and comments before the end of this week. You will have received a personal invitation via email to view the document. Simply follow the link and get stuck in. Everyone's views are of equal value so make sure what you think is reflected in the final draft. Let me know if you've lost the email with the invitation and I'll send you another.

Brain Wave

Having just finished reading Steven Johnson's "Mind Wide Open" which describes the strange science of neurofeedback, I was intrigued to discover an app for the iPhone called Brain Wave. You select a state of mind from a list including "euphoria", "critical thinking" and "creativity boost", choose the intensity of the binaural signal and an accompanying sound from nature (or just good old fashioned pink noise) and let the pulsing soundwaves do the rest. I'm in the early phases of my research so I can't report conclusively on the effects but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief and give creativity boost a go for a few days. Watch this space.

Promo Video!

I was having a look at the Charles Darwin School in Biggin Hill's website and I noticed that they had a very nice school promotional video which truly shows the large amount of creativity that happens in their school (they are also an arts college). I really liked the feel of their website.

* Does Tallis have a promo video?
* Should we have one?

The promo video is found here

This is their website

Catalytic Clothing

Arthur Mathews' mural of the nine Greek Muses (Stanford University)

This afternoon we were visited by Professor Helen Storey who came to talk to us about a new project idea with the working title of Catalytic Clothing. Helen explained that Catalytic Clothing has the potential to transform human behaviour and imporve attitudes to sustainability through the collaboration of the arts and creative sector and those working in science and technology. The aim of the research strand is the development of a product that, when deposited on an item of clothing, bestows it with the ability to break down harmful air-borne pollutants. The active agent within the product will be a material that when exposed to light is able to catalyse the breakdown of the pollutants. The product will be delivered to the surface of the clothing during the traditional laundry cycle. Currently, despite many advances in smart materials and ‘smart clothes’‚ the human's clothing surface area has not been harnessed either as an energy source in its own right, or in this case used as a potential surface area to catalyse a reaction for good use. The overall aim of the project is to enhance a given fabric in such a way that it can actively remove airborne pollutants whilst the wearer goes about their daily life.

Phil Waywell was on hand to talk us through some of the science involved in the project. He explained that advances in science are often created at the very edges of human imagination and that collaborations between artists and scentists can have remarkable benefits. He explained that the key ingredient in Catalytic Clothing worked like a hybrid between sunscreen and a catalytic converter in a car. He reminded us that, in order for a product like this to be economically viable, commercial organisations needed to be convinced that there was a profit to be made. The team were investigating several ways to evidence the effectiveness of the technology. We watched a short animation designed to illustrate the impact of Catalytic Clothing. We were asked to imagine a busy Oxford Street in which all pedestrians had washed their clothes in this new product. It would only take 40 people per minute walking along a 1 metre wide strip of pavement to strip the air of harmful pollutants.

Several thoughts were shared amongst the group. How do you prove the effectiveness of something that is invisible? How do we make people more aware of the engineering and science that surrounds us every day without resorting to scare stories and extreme scenarios? How do we manage the often instinctively negative reactions to the new?

Helen was keen to consult us about our reaction to the project idea and to see if we would be interested in collaborating with her both on a bid for further research money linked to the Olympics and, if this was successful, on further developing the educational potential of the project.

In Ancient Greece, the Olympics was as much a celebration of the human mind as it was of athletic prowess. The nine Muses were the spirits that inspired human creative endeavour and imagination. In order to make a link between Catalytic Clothing and the Olympics, Helen has proposed that we might wish to think about our own contemporary Muses, personifications of the kinds of actvities, values or ideals that are relevant to modern life. The Muses also represent inspiration and creativity but not just in the arts since there were Muses of History and Astronomy.

So, it would be great if you could respond to these two requests.

1. What did you think of the ideas contained in Catalytic Clothing? The more specific you can be in your responses, the better.

2. What activities, values or ideals would you choose as your contemporary Muses?

Personality Type Test

I do not have a clue if this is OK or if it's a scam.... I have not had any spam mail yet from it. I registered on the website (takes 45 seconds) and you have to answer about 70 questions.

Once all of these are done you get the results.... Not sure what to think of mine!

Ideas for Tangled Feet's residency

The other Feet were very excited when I fed back to them about our meeting at Tallis, and ideas have been flying about thick and fast.....

Our sound designer, Guy, had ideas about soundscapes and sound tours, like creating a sound-tour for one person at a time, using bi-naural mics (special headphone microphones which record sound exactly as the listener hears it and roots the recording in a specific location). You can do clever tricks with bi-naural mics by recording the sound in a room or open space when there's activity going on, and then playing it back to another listener standing in the same spot through headphones when the room is empty - makes it sound like the space is still full of invisible people and activity.

I've been thinking about the potential of the tents that we've been using, for different scenographic interactive installations. (they're from IKEA: http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/20072454)

We've found them to be a really versatile material - you can cut them up, throw them around, squash them, put lights inside and make them glow....you can see some images of some of the things we've found they can do here... http://picasaweb.google.com/KamPraShots

What else can we do with them? I think that the white tent walls might make a great surface to project film or photography onto. What would happen if you projected different images onto all four walls of the tent? Could you make a panorama for someone inside? I think it's worth experimenting.

The tents are also really good for writing on with permanent markers. How could we use some tents to create a new, relaxing designated space for people to contemplate the notion of home, and also to record their thoughts at the same time? I was thinking about this installation by Helen Storey http://www.helenstoreyfoundation.org/mental_ex.htm# - a giant book whose pages got filled with the thoughts of everyone who encountered it over the lifespan of the installation.

We've also had a couple of conversations with a professional chef about how you'd make a feast. Could we make a "map of the world" feast, with foods from every continent? How might we utilise the recipes from around the world that pupils and parents at Tallis cook at home - and bring them all together?

Over and out.

Our 2009 Wordle

I've just made this Wordle based on all the posts we have made to this blog since January 2009. Incidentally, there have been 111 posts so far this year already. What does the word cloud tell us? Well, my first inclination was to try to make a found poem out of the most frequent words. This is what I came up with:

Students like new learning
Tallis people make school creative
Creative project really working
Comments posted

Despite the heavy bias in this interpretation, it is fascinating to see the frequency with which words like "School", "learning", "students" and "creative" crop up. We have clearly been pretty focused in our research and on task for much of the time. Well done folks!

Presentation to the Leadership Team

This is the plan for this afternoon's meeting. I'll bring all the relevant paperwork and we can discuss who's doing what when we meet at 3:30 in DSC. The LT meeting starts at 4pm in Hut 309. We should be finished by 4:45pm. See you all later.

Ubikteatro

I think it's worth people taking a look at this site. A bit late for you to see one of their events as one in London is on tonight but still take a look . This is what their website says:

Ubikteatro is a theatre research group based in Venice, Italy. We believe in theatre, music and dance, and their interactions, both as means for creative communication and fundamental tools for a ‘mental revolution’, necessary to raise social awareness and stimulate constructive development in contemporary society.

Besides performing regularly, we run seminars and workshops and we provide personnel, technical and creative support and consultancy for external projects, including corporate events, presentation skills training, voiceovers, sound design and costume crafting.

Keen to explore old and new narrative strategies that disclose the power of physical and vocal expression, our research and interests span from Commedia dell’Arte to experimental theatre, often combining traditional elements and methodologies with the latest technologies.

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!

Manifesto collaboration

Thanks to everyone for leaving comments on the first draft of the Manifesto for a Creative Tallis. Putting it up on iWork.com seems to have worked pretty well and it was great to be able to download the document into Pages with all of the comments attached (see above). This made the editing process very straightforward.

I have attempted to incorporate all the suggestions into the latest draft. You should all have received an email inviting you to comment on the newest version. I will print this on Tuesday to give to the Leadership Team for further consultation so you have until then to have your say.