Starting on the 24th November, we held weekly sessions at Wesley Hall, Crookes focusing on a variety of different forms of writing, storytelling & poetry. The sessions were aimed at the over 50s, but as part of the project we invited a young writers group to attend some of the sessions. All the attendees enjoyed the group immensely, finding it great fun, and the paricularly liked meeting other like minded people. A publication of the best writing from the groups will be created.
Sheffield Homes residents’ and local school children will celebrate their new found connections this Tuesday 28th February at the Sharing Our Lives Celebration, hosted by Art in the Park. The event celebrates the Sharing Our Lives project run by Art in the Park in the autumn of 2011. It was an intergenerational writing project involving older people in Sheffield Homes sheltered accommodation and local primary school children and encouraged them to find similarities and links across the generations.
All the older people and primary schools involved in the project have been invited to the celebration to reconnect with each other and hear readings from writers and participants and collect a book showcasing the writing produced during the project.
The final celebration event is a brilliant way to finish off a project and we are all very excited to meet with the residents and children involved for one last time. We hope that all the participants will be extremely proud to see their work within a book, which can be a lasting reminder of all the hard work and real connections made between the young and the old.
Sharing Our Lives is an intergenerational writing project involving older people in sheltered accommodation and local primary school children. Four Sheffield Homes schemes acted as hubs. Each hub hosted six sessions for residents from there and other local schemes. The final two sessions in each hub saw children from local primary schools taking part in creative sessions at the hubs.
At Kinsey Road we completed lots of writing activities with our 6 older particpants. These were greeted very enthusiastically, especially the exercise on memory. Our artist Charlotte Ansell said that the group poems worked “particularly well”.
We also had a lot of fun at Angram Bank Primary School. The older contributors shared their experiences of WW2 and the pupils were then able to question them - they seemed very interested in the tales of bombs, aircrafts and family relationships.
The children found the personal histories fascinating, and Charlotte says there was “a lot of respect of both sides”. We’re glad that this intergenerational project was such a success, with both groups thoroughly enjoying the activities.
Art in the Park have recently installed a Poetry Trail consisting of 10 plaques in Stannington, Penistone and Denby Dale, Sheffield. The plaques contained poetry in words created by local primary children and adults from our poetry classes. Pick up a trail postcard in any of the local shops in each village to follow these pleasant walks which allow you to explore the local environment.
The event that took place on Tuesday 12th April was a great success. The children really enjoyed working with the artists on activities which Art in the Park had organised; including illustrating stories and personalising book covers etc. The day ran very smoothly and the children were proud of the work they'd produced, taking their creations home to show them off.
Write Down Your Street’ was an Off The Shelf Festival project in which we have provided community writing workshops across the south of the city. These workshops encouraged people to write about where they live and develop new creative writing skills. Most people had never been to a writing class before - it was designed for absolute beginners and to raise confidence in writing and reading. A book with 77 local people's writing was produced - from children to seniors which was launched at a celebration event at Cafe Euro. A whole host of local writers took to the stage to air an incredible mix poetry, song and prose to have come out of the workshops. As well as the Cafe Euro event we had two other big celebration events -including a Refugee and Asylum Seeker celebration event with over 100 local people attending from global communities and a real mix of ages and backgrounds. Now the project has come to an end we have 6400 postcards with local people's writing being produced.
Professional poet Joe Kriss led this extremely popular series of creative writing workshops between November 2010 to January 2011 at the Rude Shipyard book shop, Sheffield. The workshops featured as part of the 'Write Down Your Street' program of events organised by Art In The Park and Off The Shelf Literature Festival. The group enjoyed the sessions so much they are planning to continue as an informal writing group meeting at the same time each week at The Rude Shipyard. If you are interested in joining this group please contact Cassie at cassie@artinthepark.org.uk
As part of the Off the Shelf reading and writing festival, Art in the Park received a 15K ABG grant to work within the South Community Assembly area as a pilot and ran an exciting project called 'Write Down Your Street', to encourage people to tell their stories about where they live. Across the South Community Assembly area we ran a diverse range of community writing workshops, asking questions like how did you get there? What is it like where you live? Why have you stayed? Writing focused on personal experiences of living in the area - the statements about the area and sense of community are very powerful tools for CA areas . Overall 418 participants engaged in workshops and events which included 77 hours of workshops with qualified writers in the city. 50% of the participants were women that attended the courses, with 37% of participants coming from BME backgrounds - over twice the average for the city.
We also held two free open-access writing workshops :
Thursday 14th October saw the back room at the Sheaf View Pub enlivened by an enthusiastic bunch of aspiring writers, who came to share their ideas about the local areas of Sheffield where they live, and the journeys they'd made- from both near and far to arrive in them. The pub was a bright cosy place to work and the beer did indeed seem a useful contributory factor in getting the creative juices flowing! The group were warm and friendly towards each other and hugely supportive of each other's work.
We had eleven participants in all, and although I did a quick trawl of the pub to encourage anyone else to join us on the spur of the moment there was only one taker, but it was especially nice to be joined by someone who hadn't done a writing workshop before but was brave enough to accept my invitation to join in! Some fantastic work was produced as the group explored where they are from, waxed lyrical about the streets they live on now, for example a tongue in the cheek account of how Scotland St came to be named, an ode to the steepness of Bishop's Close, a touching description of Machan Bank Rd, Machan meaning fairy apparently! and a grumble about the thieving students of Crookesmoor Rd! We also experimented with writing pieces about community focal points such as the local pub, chippy, corner shop or park and the different emotions these inspired.
Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly and should be congratulated on their efforts and hard work (on a school night!) to create work that was moving or funny or thought provoking- and sometimes a bit of all three.