Impact Arts

It’s certainly been a quick 2 weeks for the Cashback teams!
Here is a round up on what the groups got up to on their second week.

The Music group
have been working on some more in depth song writing, specifically lyrics, and
how to use and play around with an app called Bandlab. They had some great one
to one sessions with a few of the young people who were relaxed enough to have some conversations around lyrical content and how that can relate to their own
issues.

It is great to hear that the young people are really coming
out of their shells and are finding the confidence to make the most of the
project.

The Digital team started
of their week with a clay workshop! The participants each created a clay
talisman to keep by their bed/on their desk to warn off evil spirits and bring
them good luck. The talismans took the form of their favourite animals, lucky
charms, and patterned shapes that can be hung by a string.

They also continued to explore the CashBack themes focusing
on solidarity and unity. The young people got talking about activism and
different movements for social change that they feel passionate about.
Designing posters to put in their windows to show solidarity. Themes included; LGBTQ+
rights, Black Lives Matter, Climate Change, and Diet Culture.

They finished off the week by learning how to use Gouache
paints, making paintings of nature and wildlife.

Both Performance
groups have been super busy over the past week! The younger group had a great
week of activity and keen engagement from those joining the sessions. They
wrote letters to, someone in the community and about something personal to
them; emotion/pet-hate etc.

This brought both beautiful and humorous writing. The young
people engaged in the idea so well and chose fabulous recipients for great
reasons, for their first letter and important ones for their second.

They also took part in a script-writing workshop, which was
requested by some of the budding writers in the group.

Tutor, Karen, also got them looking at genre and characters
and then channelling real-life characteristics, personalities and applying them
to real-life situations. She found this offers good “training” to our brains to
free up the imagination and it certainly seemed to do so for those taking part.

The older performance group have a great core of 5-7 young people
that are consistently engaging in each session, which is fantastic. They have
been spending the sessions bonding as a group; drawing, writing, discussing,
listening to music and watching some spoken word poetry videos. They found making
it more relaxed for the young people allowed the group to overcome the distance
that the online facilitating creates.

One of the young people also facilitated one of the
exercises for the group, where they used an online random word generator and
everyone had write a couple of sentences inspired or based on a random word.
Following that the pieces of writing were anonymously and randomly shared to
other young people who then had to continue the story that someone else had
written. After the beginning of each story was written by person A, the middle
by person B and then passed to person C who would finish the story. At the end
of the workshop each person had a little story that was written by 2 more
people as well as themselves but nobody knew who was who. The challenge for the
day was to take this little story and make it part of the character they
created last week. For some that meant that the story became a monologue, a
dream or the character became part of the story, in every single case their
work and imagination concurred!

They finished off their week with a reflection on the themes
of this year Cashback; solidarity, identity, unity. After a very interesting
discussion between the tutors and the young people where they all reflected on
what the words meant to them, and how they feel about them. They took one word
at the time and started non-stop writing. A very challenging exercise, writing
for 4 minutes straight but they all did amazingly!

The Visual groups
also had another great week. With the younger group making some beautiful
tissue paintings. Tissue painting is where you stick tissue to paper using
water, let it dry then pull off the tissue to reveal the marks left by the ink
in the paper. They also had a really fun Facebook live on their private group, making
fluffy spiders and webs for them to hang out on. Not only that but they but they have begun working
towards their dynamic youth awards…go team visual!

For the 16-19 group, it was all about learning to build with
cardboard. They talked about how to shape cardboard and make joins, with some
great pieces being made. Including a windmill, an elephant, a rose and a 3D self-portrait.
They also spent time looking at how artists plan 3D work and how to make maquettes
(mini models) which they photographed in different locations. Everyone is
really showing their styles and interests and have started to share some great
ideas around the theme of Identity, Solidarity and Unity!

What a week it’s been for the groups, with the young people going
from strength to strength. They are now flying off in to week 3 and the plans
for the big showcase begin! The showcase will be taking place on Impact Arts
Facebook page on Thursday 30^th July, where you will be able hear
from the young people themselves and see everything they have been up to over the
past 4 weeks. Check back here for more information on the showcase.