Collision carnival _ Milton Country Park

This was the big event- where all the carnival groups came together at Park Life, in Milton Country Park. Looking through my photos - I realise I've got lots of lovely images but I'm trying to choose ones that don't show small children's faces because of permissions.  Suffice to say it was an exhuberant, happy, noisy parade. The sun came out despite a threatening weather forecast. Sandra Scott sandra scott and I ran a workshop on the day and made lots more costumes with children and their parents so that they could join the parade. Andy O Hanlan made some kind of crazy vuvuzela - like horn from drinks cans with kids and they managed en mass to produce a phenominal racket with them.
The stilt walkers were there, there were some drums, some fabulous masks made by mask-maker William Tombs................

and then we dismantled all the giant puppets - after all where do you store such a thing? It's a good thing - we'll have to make new ones next time.

carnival - Special Needs

I worked with young people from Meldreth Manor which is a school for young people with physical & learning difficulties. Each learner made a sort of giant lollipop which attached to their wheelchairs for the carnival parade.

We used sensory materials which rustled, rattled, crackled, sparkled and shone! They looked and sounded spectacular and everyone enjoyed exploring the materials while making them as well as taking part in the final parade!

Carnival Skirts - recycled......

Thsi time it's at Melbourn Village college Activity Week- that's right the teenagers....... but this time the project focussed on links between the college and the older residents at Vicarage Close Sheltered housing.

Once again - I am relying heavily on Kirsten's excellent stART collision carnival photos at the stART website and while you're there check out what other activites are planned stART- you may want to join in!

Most of the young people made their costumes out of card. It was interesting to see how differently they approached them from the infants at Linton. The secondary school young people were really interested in structure - developing and extending out from their card collars making some really imaginative and in some cases quite humorous costumes.

I managed to get a great big bag of selvedge edges which the girls used to make these great hooped skirts - I got them from the newly opened scrapstore in March ( The place not the month) Fenland Scrapstore  This is a  new resource started by Atelier East - it's well worth a visit - they've got a really great selection of amazing stuff.

Also Cary built a proper aluminium carnival backback which a couple of the lads attached giant eyeballs on stalks to.

We made a lot of costumes _ I think I worked with about 130 young people over 2 days and during that time we also took a small group of the young people to do a workshop with the senior citizens at the sheltered housing scheme.

Giant Puppet Melbourne

This time at Melbourn Fete- and there are lots more pics at the stART website

stART collision Carnival

We worked outside the Artivan to build a giant Robo- puppet, which paraded aroung the arena towards the end of the day. It's next outing will be at Parklife in Milton Country Park.

More carnival at Linton

And then I worked with the infants from Linton School, ( yes they are only 4 and 5 years old) - to make these giant puppets

Collision carnival at with Linton Primary School

Most of this last term I've been working in schools towards another carnival - Collision Carnival in Milton Country park. I spent a few days in Linton Infants School. The children made collars, wings, shakers and hoop skirts. We were on a tight budget and in the spirit of environmental awareness we used all sorts of recycled materilas- orange bags, milk bottles, textile waste etc. The school is filled with all sorts of wonderful artwork and the whole project was a collaboration between myself, the two Reception Teachers and about sixty  4&5 year old bright, lively and very creative children!  Linton Infants

Strawberry fair parade

And some more pics from the Carnival Crossroads section of the strawberry fair Parade through Cambridge.

Sewing flags

Sandra Scott came over for a day and we sewed up the flags. sandrascotttextileartist   Check out her blog to see the wonderful work she does. And especially her very moving Alzheimer's quilt.

   Cary and I went down to Luton to deliver the flags and found ourselves helping to finish the construction of the backpacks. It was one of those mad last minute workouts well into the night with other volunteers. We felt like we knew them very well by the end of the evening although we'd only met that day! There were quite a few different carnival groups all making their costumes, using the workshops, working in the storerooms, in the hall, in the passageway. When we went to watch the Luton carnival the next day, we really felt that we'd been part of  making it happen- very exciting despite the rain. luton carnival

Then, Strawberry fair parade...................

Printed flags

Carnival flags, drying on the line as they get printed. The design is based on Romeo & Juliet.  I worked with a group of very bright, talented young people from the Garage Youth Club in Ely to develop the text messages which come from the play's text. Keith Kahn and his team of designers formulated the basic costume designs and the motifs which we used on the flags.

Creative communities

Since spring this year I've been doing lots of community projects.  I've been involved with printing flags for carnival costumes. They were used in costumes for Luton Carnival, Strawberry Fair Parade and 3 other parades in the Carnival Crossroads project. It was a lot of hard work and fun making them and great to be part of the project.Carnival Xroads