After working with the Natural Theatre Company on our Yalla Walk project our members said they would like to have the opportunity to have more guest facilitators running workshops with them.
So in Summer 2019 we ran 6 FREE workshops at the Bristol Old Vic facilitated by artists and practitioners chosen by many minds members. Below are details of the Workshops we experienced!
Jack will be working with us to give us the tools to create our own music. Tapping into our group creativity to create original music for the stage.
Jack is a theatre-maker, composer, sound designer and musician with a particular interest in collaborative work. He plays piano, percussion, guitar, beatboxes and produces music. He is Artistic Director of Tremelo Theatre, musical director of Closer Each Day: The Improvised Soap Opera, a member of Interval and associate artist of The Wardrobe Ensemble.
Breathing Fire will be doing a Playback Theatre workshop with us. Playback Theatre is a unique form of interactive theatre enabling audiences to tell their stories. Playback Theatre is a safe way of exploring internal thought processes and using the arts to express and communicate.Breathing Fire are a group of Black women of African / Caribbean descent who are committed to the empowerment of those who have historically been denied a voice. They are based in Bristol and are the UK’s only Black Women’s Playback Theatre company. They acknowledge that by sharing individual and collective stories, they tap in to the griot (African storytelling) which is grounded in their ancestral heritage.
IDENTI-DANCE is an opportunity to share your story through dance. This workshop explores the theme of identity through expressive movement and invites participants to develop a unique piece of choreography based on the experiences that have shaped people’s lives. This will be supported by music, props and an introduction to dance vocabulary.Lottie Ball has been training and working in Bristol since 2001. As a dance/movement psychotherapist she has facilitated many different groups but the main focus of her work has been in the field of mental health and disabilities. Alongside this, Lottie runs informal classes, workshops and events that encourage confidence and a sense of community using the platform GET FREE DANCE THERAPY.
Shay will deliver a vocal / beat-box / live looping workshop with the group. The workshop features various bits of music technology which allows for immediate sampling and layering of sounds from digital instruments to vocals to objects around the room. Together we will create a piece of music and then explore some lyrics to express a specific issue / message.
Shay Sharma is a creative practitioner at The Underground Creatives an arts service which specialises in engaging children, young people and adults through urban music, creative writing and media workshops. He also releases music and film projects under his artist name Mr Shay.
Julia and Chris co-run Bristol’s Wax Lyrical Choir as well as working together as part of South Bristol’s Intergenerational Choir Handfuls of Harmony. They use fun warm ups and songs to help people access their voices and build confidence in singing with others. They believe that everyone can sing and that music should come from a place of calm and enjoyment. In this session they invite you to sing with each other and co-write a song together!
‘Write about your own experience’. That’s what every aspiring writer is told. It’s good advice – it’s what we know. But what about when those memories are traumatic? And how do we avoid the risk of producing therapy not theatre?
Richard will spend the afternoon with us exploring safeguarding yourself as a creative, how to write about and perform an autobiographical story that might be triggering or traumatic whilst keeping yourself well, healthy and safe.
Richard Crowe is an actor and writer living and working in Somerset in the UK. His most recent production, Over the Wall Picking Apples, is Richard’s response to a recent diagnosis of bipolar and is both a powerful and comical exploration of life with a mental health problem. Richard also leads scriptwriting workshops and is part of The Somerset Theatre Makers Collective.
