Session 5 - Putting Ideas Together - 16/12/11

The session kicked off with everybody sitting in the circle and telling each other what number we rated our moods (between 1 and 10 - 10 being really great)


Warm Up
As a warm up and team building exercise we had to keep a balloon in the air. By working as a team we had to tap it in the air and on the fifth hit, we had to hit it with anything but our hands. The point of the activity was to show the importance of team work.

Team Exercises
We all stood in a circle and had to pass a beanbag in a sequence. We had to keep eye contact to be able to throw the beanbag to the catcher. More beanbags were added and we had to concentrate and work as a team to keep 4/5 beanbags in the air at all times. This was another team building exercise to emphasis trust within the group.

Planning A Trailer And Advert For Our Play
We split up into two groups to put our ideas together and produce an acted out trailer and an advert for our play. It was challenging, but we all worked together and they both looked great.




Reviewing Our Ideas
We all discussed our ideas and decided that it would be a good idea to merge both together in some way.

The Advert Idea: A boy stabs somebody and his conscience haunts him all the way through, he then has the challenge of telling his mum, who begs him to hand himself in.

The Trailer Idea: A girl has her phone stolen by a boy at a party. She is with her gang and she sees him at a bus stop. Her gang put pressure on her to stab him. We hear her conscience deciding whether she will use the knife or not at the end.

Warm Down:
We all reviewed how we were feeling and generally everybody's numbers had gone up, which meant that we were all feeling a lot more positive.

We all need to bring in our ideas after Christmas to show Tunde how our ideas have progressed.

Session 3 - Scenarios, Making It Happen - 02/12/11

For this session we had a new group member, Melissa, and were also joined by theatre professional, Tunde, who will be helping us with the play campaign.

The group filled the newcomers in on their ideas so far.

We talked about the idea of starting a mock fight in the playground to get people's attention, then have teachers come in to break it up and do a short interactive theatre piece with the children who come running over.

What steps do we need to take to create the play?
1. Research
2. Write the script/scenario
3. Choose director/actors/characters/music
4. Sort locations and props
5. Do advertising/promotion

What do we need to make this happen?
- An experienced campaigner - Katy Dawe from Art Against Knives?
- An experience playwright and director - Tunde
- Experience of knife crime

With the experiences of knife crime the group have had and Tunde's experience in theatre, we have all the experience we need right here in this room.

If we want to bring in artists/celebrities we need to have the idea more tailored and make a direct approach. We need to think about what their involvement will say about us as a collective. They might want to catch a ride on OUR reputation.

We discussed the age of our audience and whether it's better to target younger children, as young as Year 6.



Everyone had a story to tell so we thought it would work well if we could incorporate this into our play.



In creating the story we decided we wanted it to be:
- True
- Based on real life experiences (our experiences)
- Simplified so that young people can understand the message.