Creative ID: 768
My arts or creative practice (including details about my specific focus within that art form/practice and my strengths)
I am an artist and performer, trained in opera and with a background in textile design and research. My creative practice has been based in the Shetland Islands, Scotland where I lived and worked for 20 years before moving to the Coast with my husband last year in February. I use my skills to create original performances with young people through a combination of story-telling, creative writing, poetry, singing and music composition, and I try to incorporate costume and set design through drawing and painting. Most of my work has been with primary children but since moving to the Coast I have been involved in youth work and currently run singing and sewing classes in a youth-led space in Greymouth as well as a leadership course in a local high school.
My track record of experience and success - or the track record of experience and success of the creative or artist that I will partner with
I have more than twenty years of working in the community and with schools. All of my work has been around creativity, both in music and in textiles, and I have taught sewing, weaving, printing, singing, composition, creative writing and poetry amongst other things. As a trained operatic singer I am used to working across disciplines to achieve a performance and this has been important for my practice.
Describe the experience you have had working with children or young people, teaching or facilitating creative processes
For more than twenty years I have worked with children and young people, mainly in Shetland but also in London where my partner lived. I have also worked consistently with communities, running a musical weekend that brought adults, young people and children together to perform a choreographed performance created by musicians and dancers that I brought up to the islands. I have worked to generate creative ideas through these activities and use a variety of techniques to help achieve creative outcomes.
As my work is about helping people to be creative I do not proscribe themes or ideas but rather let the group I am working with generate their own. This has worked well in that it provides a structure for groups but is not prescriptive, freeing the group to try new things and come up with ideas for performance and design. As an example, when I first meet a group I talk about opera and singing and demonstrate how I perform. Then we will talk about ideas for a story. Perhaps I might tell one of my own stories to get people comfortable and encourage creative thought. In following meet-ups we will do some physical exercises, and then move onto exploring the story that the group has come up with, creating characters and understanding those characters, making a storyline and then working on acting activities. Over time the story becomes clear and we finish with a dress rehearsal and performance, generally to a small audience.
Why I want to be part of the Creatives in Schools programme and how my involvement will link to my creative practice
I would like to be part of the programme because I was part of a similar programme in Shetland and that worked very well for my own practice as well as in getting more people into music, singing, and textiles. I would like to be able to share my skills with young people and children so that it supports more activity in the arts in the community. This type of work is important to my own practice in that it helps me generate ideas, encourages me to improve my practice, allows me to have a structure for my days, and allows me to meet more people in the community who might be willing and able to work with me on ideas.