Animate! Community Performances
Animate! provided opportunities for communities to explore their local heritage through the medium of performance : dance, drama, poetry and visual arts. The project was led by freelance artist, Nicole Morris working through Manchester Metropolitan University.
This amazing project has engaged a huge range of participants from audiences not normally associated with performance. Using creative approaches, the project has run poetry sessions with older people in day centres and created original half hour performance piece with college students (all about the salt landscape and what it’s like to grow up here).
Animate! Also ran ‘Play in a day’ workshops with KS2 children as a way of learning about their community, landscape and history and worked with youth groups and housing associations to create innovate performance workshops through play. Read more about Saltscape Play in a Day here
A local college for young adults with learning disabilities approached the project and, with input from directors and choreographers were able to develop an original pantomime using their own landscape as inspiration for the story. Many of these young people have never before been involved in a performance.
Across numerous heritage festivals and outdoor events walkabout performances of ‘The House that Jack Built’ performed by Typhoon and the Pedal Players were given. This a group of professional actors using a ‘steam punk’ style time machine (made from a bicycle with additional welding!). The play tells the story of salt mining, subsidence and flooding creating the need for the unique ‘jackable’ buildings the area is famous for. This has allowed the Landscape Partnership scheme to access new audiences, engaging communities in a thoroughly non-traditional way.
Photos : Nick Jones, Nicole Morris, Paperwork Theatre Company
Animate! Has engaged people from over 20 separate locations (map) within the Saltscape and has reached many different audiences.
