Past Present Future (PPF) has been the flagship project for Mobile Media's third programme of work, and incorporated professional training and development for artists, with bespoke residencies in the heart of Swindon's communities.
Over a three month period, experienced artists worked with 100 pupils in three schools from the Parks and Walcot areas of the town to help boost literacy, IT skills, confidence and teamwork.
Lead Digital Artist, Elise Hurcombe, mentored and guided the training of 3 other artists new either to digital arts or to working in the education and community context. After an initial training period these artists created artworks in response to the Past Present Future theme to inform 3 intensive residencies in schools located in the most economically and socially deprived areas of Swindon.
Creative Writer, Caspar Sean Walsh, undertook a residency over 6 days at Churchfields School where there is a significant community of refugee and asylum seeker pupils.
Dancer, Susanne Thomas, undertook a residency over 6 days at Oaktree Primary School where she was working with year 4 and 5 pupils, some with Educational and Behavioural difficulties.
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Visual Artist, Mel Shearsmith, undertook a residency over 6 days with Stepping Forward, an educational charity which delivers an alternative curriculum for Year 10 and 11 pupils who have been excluded from mainstream education (usually due to emotional and behavioural difficulties).
Independent evaluation of this project has been commissioned to enhance Mobile Media's evaluation techniques and build a profile of long-term educational and social beenfits to participants. Evaluator Emma Agusita brought her experience of Creative Partnerships in Bristol to the PPF team.
Churchfields Secondary School is working with Creative Writer Caspar Sean Walsh over a five-week period to build interactive websites with a mixed group of pupils who include those from refugee or asylum backgrounds. Caspar has also worked in Radio and film and co-founded a literary production company called ‘Words Allowed’ in Bristol in 1997.
Click here to see images of the Churchfield School Project
Click here to view the websites built by some of the pupils of Churchfields School (a new window will open to an external site)
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Pupils from Oaktree Primary School spent a week with Susanne Thomas, a Dancer working with children aged between 8 – 10 years old, integrating animation with literacy and dance. Susanne is Artistic Director of the seven sisters group, a Site-specific performance company.
Click here to see images of the Oaktree School Project
Stepping Forward is an educational charity which delivers an alternative curriculum for Year 10 and 11 pupils. Young people are working with Mel Shearsmith, a Visual artist who is also a filmmaker and has recently worked as Lead Artist on a project called Seven Secret Wonders of Bristol creating a website.
Click here to see images of the Stepping Forward Project
Mel is a site-specific and installation artist whose work explores ‘place’, its voice and its poetry, how we relate, respond and choose to be in dialogue with our environment – our internal and external landscape.
Her installations take the form of video, sculpture and can include elements of dance. Mel’s work with film allows for landscapes to be picked up and transported to another destination…she believes in utilising the camera as another eye, a new perspective, a dancer with its own view.
Her dance films have been shown at The Place in London, the Tobacco Factory in Bristol, at the Dublin Fringe Theatre Festival, ‘The Articulate Practitioner Conference’ and the ‘Towards Tomorrow’ International Conference on the Future of Performance both at the Centre for Performance Research, Aberystwyth.
Placing video within installations has allowed Mel to explore how the audience activates and interacts with film. Her site-specific web based piece, the Seven Secret Wonders of Bristol premiered at the Watershed on the Electric Pavilion website and Electric December digital advent calendar.
Mel really likes good chocolate cake, portals and collecting stones.
Caspar is a published and broadcast writer in text, audio and film. Including 3 commissions for Radio 4, an award winning short film and a recent article in the Observer.
He co-founded the highly funky and successful literary production company Words Allowed in Bristol in 1997 which led to the commissioning of local and national artists, published and unpublished. WA generated around £100,000 of income in the first 3 years of trading, 70% of which was paid directly to artists. Through WA came commissions to work with various community groups to produce stories for the page and ear.
This included working in prisons and with excluded young people, the most recent highlight being a writing partnership with a group of young offenders leading to the creation of a 45 minute docu-drama for Radio 4.
Currently co-creating rites of passage trainings for young people using the stories of the grail as a narrative structure.
Caspar's passion is for learning about who we are through the power of story, whatever the form. Most important guiding principle? We're all busy, the in tray will never truly be empty, take a nap every day, wherever you are.
Elise is Lead digital artist and is supporting and directing the artistic delivery through out the project. She has been involved in various multi media projects as artist and project manager collaborating with other artists and working independently. She is currently studying an MA in Interactive media at University West of England. Elise is also working with Creative partnerships in the Forest of Dean developing, running and delivering a diverse range of projects. She also is an experience freelance photographer and exhibits her work through out the UK.
Really likes live gigs, reflections in water, colours of the trees in the Forest of Dean in autumn.
Artistic director of seven sisters group. Her wealth of choreographic work has been presented in both indoor and outdoor sites in the UK and Europe, with venues ranging from theatres and galleries, libraries and railway stations to the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre. seven sisters group’s work has been described as leading in the field of dance and site-specific performance practice. Susanne’s teaching experience has included dance and art students, professional artists and community groups. Her background in visual arts, cross art collaboration and sound contemporary dance knowledge enables her to teach a wide range of people with dance or art interests.
She has collaborated on various multi media projects (with Nic Sandiland, Jane Hogde and Jamie Rory Lucy) and trained in video and editing over the last 2 years at Swindon Dance. Likes sunshine, sleep and smiley people.
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