Archive for July, 2007Words by James Yarker at Stan’s Cafe On Monday the rain stopped and clouds parted over Frankley, Birmingham, for precisely the two hours requested to allow the School’s Carnival to be the triumph everyone’s efforts deserved it to be.
Last year Holly Hill Infant School blazed the trail by staging a Circus Carnival that involved the whole school, costumes, chanting, actions and a band. It was magnificent. Soon there was a clamour for an expanded carnival this year with neighbouring schools; the result was even more magnificent. There were three bands, including a full-on Samba Team, an exuberant dancing section and four giant carnival costumes, which threatened to convert into gilded paragliders in the high winds. The increase in age range gave the carnival more diversity than last year. The Seasons’ theme gave the pupils a chance to pursue their own creative ideas whilst keeping a coherence to proceedings. There was an army of Snow Fairies, a host of trees with wind rustling their leaves, thunder clouds with lightening, rain drops and rainbows, fiery Suns, a platoon of Lady Birds, Green Shooting Grass with worms and earth, clumps of flowers surrounded by butterflies and bumble bees, whilst a shoal of silver scaled fish played a slippery samba. The large-scale combination education, artistry and logistics delivered by Ana and her small team was deeply impressive. The engagement enjoyment of pupils, teachers and other school staff and support of parent was evident. A burst of sunshine was the least everyone deserved. Over the last two years Reaside School has been working on an extended project exploring and in some cases inventing, local mythologies. Now surely they have helped create their own mythology – the great Frankley Carnival of 07. James
As part of the same conference where we met Soweto Kinch we also played our work to a room full of people and talked to them about the podcasting project. We showed one of them (Hugh - thank you) the basics of podcasting and he interviewed us about what we had learned. This is the end result.
Earlier today four students from year 9 met the international jazz musician Soweto Kinch at a conference of people who work for Creative Partnerships. It was part of the podcast project we’d been working on last week. We played some of our podcasts to Soweto and listened to some of his music from his album about Birmingham “B19″. Then we recorded an interview with him where he encouraged us to be creative and told us we don’t have to leave either Frankley or Birmingham to be succesful. |
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