The Echo-Children

In a recent posting I was telling you about the first of my three days at a primary school local to Gloucester City who have been having a Celebrate Gloucester week. I worked for three mornings with years 1 - 3, so 5 - 7 years old. At the start of each session I chatted with them about where they personally liked in Gloucester. Not necessarily where the obvious tourist attractions might be but where they themselves liked to be. Maybe there was a particular little lane, or shop window, or building, that they particularly liked. The overall concept was for the children to create personalised tour guides for my bear Ursula who lives with me in a cottage in the woods and has never been to Gloucester ...


The children had the choice of creating the tour guide in a comic strip paper-based form, or of creating a piece of performance ... with a narrative ... using settings from around the city.

I've already mentioned the tale of Ursula's Scary Visit To Gloucester created by the children on day one of the project. Days 2 and 3 brought tales of the homeless (princesses all dressed up and nowhere to go), two silly secret agents (Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau would have been proud of their slapstick performance I'm certain), a boat crash on the canal (Oopsie!) and an enchanting tale of children who could throw their voices, by echo, all the way from Gloucester docks to the Forest of Dean.

All of the tales were performed to an audience that consisted of the bear and the other children in the group.

On the third and final day, there happened to be over 20 children in the overall group, so several performance pieces took place. As the last one finished, a child who had been an enthusiastic audience member but not in any performances herself, shouts across the room to me to ask 'which one did you like the best?'

'Which one did you like best?' I counter, because I don't feel it's appropriate for me to show favour based on the limited time they've all had to create their pieces.

The questioning child is around 5 years old, but one of those 5 year olds that are going on 30, you know the ones. So she repeats her question. I like all of them equally, I tell her. And she gives me a look that tells me in no uncertain terms that she knows I have a favourite, that she knows which one it is, and she wants me to declare it.

I resisted. And after a brief internal struggle with herself, the little lass decided not to persevere.

But I'll tell you ... it's the echo-children that return to me every time I visit Gloucester city.

The image that accompanies this posting is one I took during the Crucible sculptural art exhibition that was held at Gloucester Cathedral last year.

I visited the exhibition several times but I've never worked out why we were warned to 'take care'. Danger! Look out! There's a sculpture about! I wonder what the echo-children would have made of that?

Ursula in Gloucester City

I've been working in a primary school in Gloucester today, leading a comic strip and performance devising workshop with a group of 5 - 8 year olds. The school is having a 'Celebrate Gloucester City' week, and I'm there for three days as part of a creative programme offering lots of creative activities to lots of different groups of pupils.




What fun!



So stimulating to work with four small children who were bursting, just bursting, with ideas for a performance story. I love devising by improvisation, it's like letting your imagination into an adventure playground.



The children came up with 'Ursula's Scary Visit To Gloucester', a delicious ghostly story that took in the cathedral (of course), the railway station (not sure why Ursula was going to Scotland for three days but at least she came back because she was missing Gloucester), and the little cafe stall in the indoor market that apparently does great hot chocolate and marshmallows (who knew!).



Ursula is my bear by the way.

More on Ursula tomorrow.

For now, just well done to this morning's group who devised, rehearsed, dress-rehearsed and performed the play - to an audience of some other pupils and Ursula her furry self - in a morning.



I'm working with a different group tomorrow morning, same theme, same workshop, but there'll be massively different results. I'm looking forward to it immensely.