PMUK Blog

After the success of our Adventures of the Little People summer school (a project for 8-12 year olds) we decided to run a second project of its kind during the October Holidays and this time the theme was moving images. There were 13 little people involved and we divided them into 3 groups each with a different art form to explore the theme. The art group used words, art and photography to tell an imaginary story of their journey to the workshop, their final performance even included singing and dancing.

The drama group worked with a writer and an actor to produce a piece of the theatre that resembled old black and white, silent films. The participants worked together to write the play which was about the Queens crown being stolen and even composed a soundtrack to accompany the performance.

The film group worked together to make a film called Cartoon World in which a group of friends would draw things and they would come to life. The group wrote, created the set and characters, starred in and even partly edited the film.

This project concluded with a showing  of all the Little Peoples work, friends and family who came to show their support were very impressed with the work that they had produced.

On the 20th August, our core team and some of Dundee based volunteers took up one of our biggest iGNiTE challenges to date…to run an iGNiTE in 6 hours. This work was a follow on from a project that we did in the summer with Dundee Youth Voice and the Lord Provost Youth Festival. As well as working with  the Dundee represents we were joined by young people from Dundee’s Twin Cities including Orleans in France, Alexander in Washington, and Wurzburg in Germany. Our role in the conference was to help produce the young delegates create something in response to the discussions they had in their groups. Each group was assigned a topic: Economy, Education and Sports & Leisure. The young delegates and our team worked hard to produce high quality work which was then presented to an audience with the Lord Provost and adult delegates plus members of the general public; they responded with a standing ovation.

As part of our summer program this year we ran a summer school for 8-12 years olds based on our iGNiTE process.  This was a fun filled week for both our workers and Little People. The group worked really hard to produce a high standard of work based round Dinosaurs. The first group made a film in which they gave their own fictional reasons why the dinosaurs became extinct. The group wrote the story, script and created their set and costumes.  The performance group wrote a comical play titled ‘Come Dine With Me’ about a group of dinosaurs having a dinner party in which the young people were able to display their acting and various other skills including juggling, dancing and telling jokes. The final group created a performance piece which included dancing, a fashion show and the music to accompany it. They created their own dinosaurs, designed t-shirts and masks and a story to accompany each one. They also designed their own set for their performance. On the final day family members and friends attended to see what the Little People had been working on. There was a great buzz in the room as each group got the chance to show their results from the workshop and when it was all done there was nothing but positive feedback given by audience, participants and workers. The workshop was a great success so watch this space for the next Adventures of the Little People.

JEDBURGH GRAMMER SCHOOL 15-16TH June 

Our team of skilled workers and volunteers recently ran a 2 day iGNiTE experience with 70 first year pupils at Jedburgh Grammer School. The pupils were split into three groups and asked to ‘tell the story of Jedburgh’ using various art forms including music, art, photography, dance, creative writing and drama. After two days of hard work and a lot of energy from both pupils and workers three unique performances were created that were performed in front of fellow pupils and teachers. This experience was a rousing success with the pupils creating three great performances from nothing and enjoying the process and the teachers being impressed with all the pupils willingness to perform in public. 

ARBROATH ACADEMY 18-19TH JUNE 

Our iGNiTE schools experiences continued with a two day project in Arbroath Academy in which we worked with 16 fourth year pupils. These pupils worked alongside our team to ‘tell us the history of Arbroath – fact and fiction’. We split the pupils into two groups, the first group told us the fictional history of Arbroath in which mutant smokies lived around the Bell Rock lighthouse and they heard that the monks of the Abbey were trying to take over Arbroath and they wanted to stop them. So the smokies stormed the Abbey and fought the monks till the two merged to become monk fish who are now the residents of Arbroath today. This story was told through animation, drama and dance. The second group told the factual story of Arbroath in which they presented the past, present and future in music, make-up and photography. Everyone worked hard to put on a final performance which was enjoyed by fellow pupils and teachers. This experience was a great success with the participants growing in confidence, enthusiasm and looking iGNiTE experience.