Arbury Carnival Workshops

The Giants of Arbury Carnival.

The first year we did Arbury carnival, the theme was 'Musicals" and the Nunns Way Crew selected the Lion King.   Amongst all the other lovely costumes we made, Cary worked with the kids to make this lovely big lion.

The lion lived in a barn for a year and came out for the following carnival as ET - can't find any pictures at the moment so you'll have to trust me on this.

We are not sure where it spent the winter, but it arrived back in the workshop last spring and was transformed into a giant octopus. 

 

He/she(?) then took up residence on our kitchen sofa for a couple of months and drank lots of tea...!

It had one final outing, disguised as a spider at Ely Folk Festival and then graciously surrendered to the bonfire.

  In that time there have been other Arbury giants - the amazing giant robot,

 and the wonderful seagull made in consort with Dawn and  other folk from Arbury school

 This year we are working on something completely different.  I'm not saying what it is......  but you can find out by coming to Nunn's Way Pavilion Friday afternoons to help with the construction!  So that's every Friday afternoon, 3.00 - 5.00p.m. until the Carnival which is 10 June this year - not much time left!

 

Arbury Carnival 2015

Despite the rain, Arbury Carnival was wonderful this year.  Sandra Scott, Cary  and myself, the wonderful volunteers from the Arbury Carnival Committee and from Kettles Yard worked with young people at Nunn's Way Pavilion and in local schools and community groups to do costumes, banners and giant puppets.   The theme this year.......well you can probably tell.

The final frontier!

Spot the flying saucer

Alien robot strikes!

Not only aliens - the whole solar system....

Alien selfie - yes that's me and Cary testing that the masks are wearable!

Giant robot - made by Cary and the glue gun posse.

Will have to find some better pictures of this - watch this space....

Arbury carnival

Some more active pictures of the carnival! I hope these capture the happy spirit of the day:

Arbury Carnival

Sandra Scott, Cary Outis and myself have been working on the Arbury Carnival Parade.  It's community project organised by Kettles Yard.  We made costumes, masks, banners, standards and a giant lion king puppet.

The kids were great and they worked really hard over weeks to make all the bits that went into the parade.  But the real stars were the volunteers who got together determined to make this event a success.

see Arbury Carnival  to see some great pictures ofthe event.

Meanwhile here is one of our own more amateur photos:

Lion King Puppet

I just realised that although we have lots of pictures of the wonderful costumes we made, I don't want to put them up on the blog because I don't have photo permissions.  So you'll just have to trust me that they looked brilliant!

Big Feet Little Feet

Introducing the Thongsley Giant!!!

Waiting anxiously for his big entry to the carnival parade....

And after the applause!

In repose after the event

   And here are some details of the felted landscapes made by the children and their parents which made up the giant's cloak:

 

And this is his skeleton :

 He has become a much loved member of the school!

I worked with Key Stage 1 children and their parents over several weeks to make our gorgeous giant  and other carnival costumes.

Sandra and Mel Scott also made lots of wonderful costumes with the families including tie dye and tasssels and other sparkly things and Jo ran the  Samba section. See  sandra's blog for our 'team portrait' 

 In preparation for the Giant's carnival we did lots of research on giants, we read books about giants; we made books and wrote our own giant stories;  we drew tiny giants, projected them up on the wall and measured them; we  created great big giants on the floor with strips of fabric and the children lay down next to them to compare sizes.  

This was all part of the wonderful Big Feet Little Feet family learning project  at Thongsley Fields Primary School.  

Big Feet Little Feet is a Natural High project .