Recent Projects

The Eco-Teams Convention in the Woods

Movingsounds hosted a day with 3 Eco Teams from locals schools in Vert Woods, Sussex. Check out the video below!
We discussed challenges and visions, foraged for food, ate local organic food and played great music.
Getting into nature was inspiring and brought the groups together to share their experiences. Hopefully the first of many days in the woods!

Transition Towns

Moving Sounds produced this short film to promote the message and meaning of Transition Towns: a long term action plan for adapting to Climate Change and dependence on fossil fuels.
The Transition Town model started on Kinsale, Ireland and has spread to numerous other towns, villages and cities. It's a positve, creative, community responce to the great challenges of our time.

Movingsounds mini-documentary of the second Transition Town Conference:

Moving Sounds also ran musical story-telling workshops about 'How to Make the Best World Imaginable' with all the 7- 10 year olds in the town of Lewes.

Video- activitism

We have been running video-activism workshops where participants can film and edit their own videos to raise awareness of environmental issues. In partnership with Transition Town Totnes local people made videos highlighting the importance of community in the face of Peak Oil and climate change.
Watch this great video mixing song, dance and compost toilets:

Africa!

Working in partnership with World Family Movingsounds is promoting awareness of food sovereignty issues. We are working towards a food sovereignty festival hosted in Nigeria with small-holder farmers from around the world.

Intergenerational Arts

Working with Magic Me video was used as part of a 12 week arts project with primary school children, university students and elders from a local day centre. A short film was used in the final performance to show the creative process of sculpture, song, movement and games- a part of creative projects which is often unseen.

The Backstory

The Backstory is a form or Forum Theatre: a way of working with groups to explore issues affecting them and how to make real changes.
In this project drama students from Sackville Community College and Imberhorne School came together and created a character called '17'. They went into the characters life and explored events that shaped '17's life choices.

The process led to a performance workshop with 200 teachers at the Network Learning Conference. The young people actually facilitated the teachers in the process they had learned during the project.

The 3 Rs recycling, music and drama project: "Reduce, Re-use, Recycle." (Summer 2005 autumn 2006)

Funded by an environmental education grant from Veolia, the waste disposal company, the '3Rs' project worked with approximately 1500 children in 20 primary schools in Brighton and East Sussex. Each workshop involved an interactive performance using junk percussion, recycled instruments, rap, theatre and plenty of clowning around. We then lead a discussion about recycling and the wider environmental issues; this lead on to exciting drama activities culminating in a fantastic group music jam using our orchestra of recycled percussion.

Graffiti Wall

Working with top graffiti artist Alex Young and Movingsounds students from E.T.C. and Netherfield Primary School created a graffiti mural design about Maths. Alex then painted their designs on one of the school's walls. Students saw their ideas come alive on the walls of their school for all to see.

Film Making with Students to Promote Recycling

Working with students from Cavendish School, Eastbourne, Moving Sounds made this film to raise the profile of the recycling initiatives set up by the students in the school.
The students wanted to raise the question: "Why don't people care?" and made this the focus of their film.

Opera in the Community (ongoing)

A collaboration between The English National Opera and Lookahead Housing and Care which worked with residents from a hostel in Westminster and professional arts practitioners. Opera as an art-form was initially used to devise music, video and theatre pieces concluding an on-street performance. Movingsounds produced a video documentary of the creative process celebrating the individuals involved. In the second project we developed music for the performance including body percussion, beat-boxing and funky chicken inpersonations.

We are currently working with Ali Campbell -Queen Mary's University of London- to produce Mozart's 'Magic Flute' through a wide-ranging community opera process.

Innovation in Maths (ongoing spring and summer 2006)

Together with Creative Partnerships, Movingsounds worked at Eastbourne Technology College (ETC) to explore creative ways of teaching maths through visual arts, graffiti, movement, and music.

We also managed a similar project with excluded young people . Working through creative arts activities such as photography, video, song writing, break-dance and basketball we formed an engaged core group. We then spent a day in the woods with Trackways Wilderness Skills learning through nature awareness activities. The students, using digital photography documented this and a DVD was produced and shown at the school to conclude the first phase of the project.

"Movingsounds present a wide range of skills that enable them to meet with our project objectives in a flexible and responsive way. Of all the practitioners they have had the most insight into the context in which they are working and been the most perceptive in engaging with it"
Peter Thompson, Creative Partnerships Hastings and East Sussex

Healthy Eating Campaign. (Jan/Feb 2006)

A collaboration with Queen Marys, University of London Working with 15 students from Pheonix High School, White City in West London, and in collaboration with artists and dieticians to research and launch a healthy-eating campaign in the school using creative arts and action-research.

After only 9 hours contact time over 2 weeks the group had made a music video about healthy food, designed a poster-campaign and built sculptures from fruit. The group then lead workshops with younger students exploring food issues and action research. The music video "GOOD FOOD BAD FOOD" was shown in the lunch hall and used as valuable documentation and learning tool for other projects.

Margate Exodus; the plagues project (March 2006)

As part of the Margate exodus project involving Art Angel and the Arts Council we worked with Creative Partnerships at Laleham School in Margate. Over 5 days we worked with young people from year nine with learning difficulties exploring the theme of 'plagues' and created a multimedia stage performance drawing on all their fantastic ideas. We wrote songs, poems and stories, created costumes and props, drew beautiful illustrations and used video clips to produce an extremely modern, inspired performance of drama, music and projected visuals.

"What impressed me most was the interest and enthusiasm towards the childrens ideas and concepts."
Sam Parker, Laleham Gap School, Margate.

Community Consultation on the Isle of Wight. (Oct 2005)

Working with the Children's fund on the Isle of Wight, Movingsounds formed part of a team of creative practitioners to run a consultation project with young-people from disadvantaged backgrounds. We worked together using music, samba percussion, song-writing, drama activities including Legislative Theatre, art and sculpture. Through these art forms the young-people were able to express their feelings about life on the Island and how it could be improved.

After 3 days the group had become a team with a sense of their strengths and new friendships. The 4th and final day of the project was a public family event called The Big Day Out in which the young people performed a fantastic samba procession and made a giant labyrinth, the centre of which was a collection box in which members of the public were invited to write their views on services for young-people on the island and how they could be improved. The information was then used by the council to inform policy on youth services. The finale of the day was a performance of Forum Theatre by the young people and witnessed by council members and the public exploring important issues in their lives.

The Ecovision Show (ongoing)

(See Eco Show). A collaboration with Global Action Plan to highlight issues around climate-change, energy use, oil consumption and renewable energy. The show incorporates an energy-generating bicycle, music, theatre and dance.

Workshop outline:

• Performance using rap, theatre, dance and an energy-generating bicycle.
• Students discuss the show creating a giant 'spidergram' of the issues raised.
• Riding the energy-generating bicycle to power household appliances.
• Drama and music activities exploring the themes of the day.

The teachers were also provided with an education resource pack.

Recycled Fashion Show (June 2005 and November 2005)

A collaboration with Spectral Arts and 5 secondary schools in Brighton, Hove and East Sussex to create a fashion show entirely made from recycled materials. Movingsounds worked with year 8 students to compose and perform a piece of music to open the whole event. We wrote songs and composed rhythms on junk percussion and home made instruments to create a piece that expressed the students' views and feeling about waste and our environment.

Sustainable Neighbourhood Design (summer 2005)

A collaboration with the Children's University in Brighton and Broadway Malyan architects working with approximately 120 students from year 6,7,8 and 9 from two schools in Brighton. Our brief was to facilitate the students in generating and communicating their ideas about the local neighbourhood. We looked at safety, community, play and leisure, green spaces and signage using group mind-mapping activities, poetry, drawing and discussion.

The project culminated in an installation of work and a presentation to the architects, planners, local residents and a French partner community viewing this project as a model for community consultation. Some of the students' ideas were used in the forthcoming improvement of the area.

Global Citizenship and fair Trade (Jan 2005)

This was a one-day project at Wallands Primary School in Lewes looking at Fair Trade, Environmental Issues and 'Making a Difference' in three separate workshops. The day culminated in performances of music and drama devised by the students to the rest of the school.

Zambia - Lewes Video Link

This was a project exchanging video-interviews with students from the New School in Lewes, and a school near Lusaka in Zambia. We also made a similar link with a performing youth music and dance group in the Zambia as part of the same project. The students in both countries watched the interviews and videos of each other's school and neighbourhood. The students then created and performed music and dance pieces about activities in their lives (sports and fishing) to video and send to the students abroad.

Tribal Peoples workshop

This workshop used resources from Survival International ­ a charity campaigning for tribal peoples' rights- and drama and music activities to explore the contentious issues facing tribal peoples in Brazil today. The day finished with students writing illustrated postcards to the Brazilian president expressing their views.