Click to view poem animation
Seven groups of young people from across Islington worked with professional writers and artists to explore the literature and heritage of their borough, and create their own original writing.
| Inspire! Young Parents Group |
As part of All Change’s Inspire project, young parents from Islington created stories and rhymes for their own children. Working with a team of artists including writers Judith Bryan and Paul Lyalls, film maker and digital artist Carl Stevenson, and musician Russ Alsop the young women discovered a Mother and Baby story and rhyme session at Archway Library. The group created nonsense verse, a la Edward Lear, and mined their memories of childhood to write short prose pieces on 'school dinners', 'pets' and 'things that made them laugh'. As part of working towards their bronze arts awards, they wrote a story about meeting their arts hero. They created fantasy characters from their children’s handprints and puppets from baby paraphernalia, including nappies, bottles and shoes, and used these to create animated stories for their children.
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| Mount Carmel RC Technology College for Girls |
Year 11 media students worked with writer Sarah Butler and film maker Carl Stevenson to explore contemporary responses to George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen-Eighty-Four. The students created a short film, documenting the battle between humans and robots at Mount Carmel School in the year 2070, and exploring aspects of Orwell’s dystopian vision, including CCTV, Newspeak, power and control.
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| Arsenal FC – Kickz project and Youth Inclusion Project |
Eleven young people from Arsenal’s Positive Futures Project spent an intensive six days at the Emirates Stadium working with poets Charlie Dark and Yemisi Blake and film maker Esther Yarnold. They created a series of films and poems inspired by their experiences at the stadium, history of Arsenal, Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch and biographies of famous Arsenal players.
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| Highbury Area Project – Deaf Visual |
Young people from Deaf Visual worked with writer Yemisi Blake, film maker Esther Yarnold and dancer Jo Dunbar to explore issues of racism and miscommunication in Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island. The final piece is a distillation of the participants’ personal responses to Islington using choreography, text and film.
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| FWA Young Carers Service – Islington |
Young carers based in Islington worked with writers Sharmila Chauhan and Paul Lyalls and artist Esther Yarnold, exploring the theme 'What It Feels To be Young'. Taking a range of texts and lyrics by Charles Dickens, Lilly Allen, John Betjeman, Public Image Limited and Jamilla Gavin as starting points, the participants produced poems and short stories. Selecting favourite lines from their work, they produced placards which they placed and photographed around Islington to produce visual statements, merging together their own experiences with the backdrop of Islington's rich heritage.
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| Richard Cloudesley School |
Taking Douglas Adams’ novel, Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as inspiration, students from Richard Cloudesley school worked with novelist Sharmila Chauhan and film maker/digital artist Carl Stevenson to imaginatively travel through the history of Islington. The project took place over seven weeks and involved a trip to Islington’s local history centre and an imaginative journey through time on the London Eye. The students used technology devised to suit their needs to produce 'live' video streams mixing imagery with text to explore the juxtaposition of famous Islington texts and key points in Islington’s history, together with modern day technology.
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| Holloway School |
Year eight students worked with performance artist Siobhan O’Neill and writer Sarah Butler, looking at writing by Edward Lear, Neil Gaiman, Charles Dickens and John Betjeman. They discovered Islington’s history as a major drovers’ thoroughfare, from then rural fields through to Smithfield’s Market, and re-enacted that route by walking a sheep through modern Islington streets, collecting stories as they went.
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| The Event |
On 23 February 2008 a digital collage of the young people’s work was presented at LSO St Luke’s to an audience of over 100 people. Project artist, Yemisi Blake, created a series of poems linking the seven individual projects, which were performed live by project participants Shanice Vigilant and Antoinette Rae, and Yemisi Blake.
Gallery
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| The Digital Book |
The creative work that came from the Write Now and Then project has been published in a digital book, which will be held by all public libraries and secondary schools in Islington. The book forms the first chapter of Islington’s 21 st Century story.
 To obtain a copy of the Write Now & Then digital book
please contact All Change on 020 7689 4646 or email all.change@virgin.net
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