The Everyman Theatre Education and Community team has been involved in running Arts Award for many years, from Discover through to Gold level. And most recently, they have taken Arts Award Discover to new audiences by integrating the awards into 2 creative community projects. The first of these was a collaboration between a local artist and a theatre company commissioned by The Everyman called “Displaced Child”.

Discover Arts Award: Displaced Child

This project involved children participating in the creation of a sculpture with Cheltenham artist, Natasha Houseago which had been commissioned by The Everyman Theatre to raise awareness of “The Walk with Little Amal” by Good Chance theatre and GARAS (Gloucestershire Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers).

The sculpture named, “Displaced Child”, has a backpack decorated in peg dolls which represent the millions of displaced children across the world.

Camille Cowe and Hayley Pursey from the Everyman Theatre led a drop-in workshop at The Cathedral where children decorated an old-fashioned wooden peg and then wrote on a luggage tag the name, age and country of birth of their pegdoll character. The children were told about Natasha the artist that made the sculpture and also about the puppet; “Little Amal” from the production who walked 8000 km from Syria to Manchester to find her mum.

The children could choose whether they left the pegdoll with the sculpture or took it home. Amazingly, many of the children decided to leave their pegdoll with the sculpture.

50 children joined the workshop throughout the day and 10 of these completed the Arts Award Discover worksheet.

Hospital Arts Award project

Next came an Arts Award project with Gloucestershire Hospital Education Service. Two children who had been patients at Gloucester Royal Hospital were filmed performing “What Happens Next” in the Children’s In-patient ward’s playroom.

Still from the time travel film: ‘What happens next?’

The film was about Time Travel where the large games console became a time machine that transports the children through time (you can watch the film at the bottom of this blog). The Everyman filmed interviews with the director and the film practitioner.

The teachers based at the school room in the Children’s In-patients ward showed patients the film and encouraged the patients to write about or draw what happens next to the characters. The patients also watched the filmed interviews with the artists involved and then they shared with the teachers what they enjoyed and learned from the project.

The Everyman and GHES aim to do an awards ceremony in June 2022 at St Mary De Crypt in Gloucester for all the children who have done the award. This will also be an opportunity for the children to receive their Arts Award Discover certificates.

For more information about Arts Award at the Everyman Theatre and how to get involved, contact:

Camille: camille.cowe@everymantheatre.org.uk or Hayley hayley.trust@everymantheatre.org.uk.

WATCH THE FILM made for the hospital Discover Arts Award project by sos film photography sound below.