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'All the world's a stage' announces the
Globe Theatre's tour and exhibition promotion on London's South
Bank. And when you take the tour, you are soon reminded that, in
Shakespeare's day at least, the Globe was an authentic and popular
theatre for the people.
Just a stone's throw away on the breeze-block
walls of a shared office space, underneath a block of flats, a makeshift
gallery of compelling images catches the magic of ordinary people
transformed by the pleasure of performance into dancers, actors
and story tellers. 1st Framework was set up by Director/designer
Peter Avery and producer Maxine Webster in 1982 to bring together
arts practitioners and community groups in un-conventional venues
to work together on cross art form projects that are both challenging
and experiential. 1st Framework - with its mix of artists, volunteers
and local groups - is making an important contribution to realising
the cultural and creative potential of lifelong learning.
1st Framework has done this most noticeably
through its partnership work with The Mary Ward Centre. Over a hundred
years earlier, Mary Ward achieved modest fame in her own lifetime
as a best selling novelist, but she has had a more enduring impact
on public education through the pioneering work she initiated at
the settlement she founded which now bears her name. On the agenda
was a rich mix of clubs, concerts, debates and lectures that reached
the lives of ordinary people. Her declared aim was to promote 'equalisation'
in society and the settlement was soon crammed with local residents
enjoying 'the hundreds of pleasures and opportunities that fall
mainly to the rich'. Concerts and music were always an important
part of the programme. The building acted as a magnet to ordinary
people who not only came to pursue intellectual pursuits and learn
practical skills, but to be part of a social and community network
that included groups interested in music and debating, and self
help groups like the Coal Club and the Poor Man's Lawyer Service.
At one time George Bernard Shaw, Sydney Webb and Keir Hardie were
amongst those who lived in the settlement's batchelor accomodation
and who gave lectures about how best to support the struggles and
improve the lives of ordinary people.
Today the Mary Ward Centre still takes
the values and priorities of its founder seriously and continues
to be a place for ideals and enthusiasm. Its no surprise, therefore,
that some of the centre's current members have become energetic
partners with 1st Framework in a number of community arts initiatives
in recent years. By making touring projects with young professional
arts practitioners The Over 60s Drama Group has succeeded in challenging
the historical steretypical idea that older people are reluctant
to embrace new ideas or use new technology. They now have a well
deserved reputation for making high quality innovative projects
which encourage people of all ages to 'lay claim to their futures
in diverse and creative ways'. Besides local performances, they
have toured 22 cross art form projects to Ireland, Scotland and
Australia, taking the projects to locations where there is little local
arts provision including dis-used Miners Welfare Associations, Military
Hospitals, schools, community centres and residential homes. However,
their projects are also welcomed by the arts 'establishment' including
West Yorkshire Playhouse, Institute of Contemporary Art, British
Library, Serpentine Galley and Sadlers Wells Theatre . In 1996 the
partnership won first prize for their production of 'Stories' in
Ireland during the European Year of Lifelong Learning. Georgina
Dobson who took the role of Ariel in a production of the Tempest
at the Edinburgh Festival entertains most Tuesday nights at a gay
bar in Mayfair. 'A cab comes to collect her on cabaret night almost
every week. She has a great singing voice and the songs she likes
to sing seem to go down very well.' Maxine seemed to take it for
granted that I would understand. And of course, I did.
The Mary Ward Centre provides the 'incubator'
in which projects are developed in a weekly class. Eventually when
conditions are right, money raised, project partners and venues
found the intergenerational teams pack their suitcases and hit the
road. On tour last year with Green Candle Dance Company, 1st Framework
took their 'join-in-the-production' approach to community arts to
venues somewhere near you. They began with Peter Avery's skeleton
script, describing simple and abstract visual ideas of 'home', and
a core professional company of dancers, musicians, designers and
technical crew, and went out to five different regions, staying
in each for ten days, and developing the show with local arts organisations,
schools, colleges, community groups, brass bands, dance groups,
special needs centres, asylum seekers, choirs and older people.
In each place a specially chosen venue was 'home' to the final production,
presented as a promenade performance unique to each place, with
different groups contributing to different scenes before an exuberant
finale brought everyone involved to their feet, dancing to music
played by a brass band. Artistic Director Peter Avery says of
the West Midlands residency in Sandwell, 'One of our abiding memories
will be of the various Sandwell groups between the afternoon and
evening shows spread out in the sun across the grass of the municipal
gardens playing rough cricket, learning tribal dances and exchanging
Marmite sandwiches.'
Not only did local groups have a lot
of fun from taking part, but the workshop format allows for significant
and difficult issues and differing concerns to be explored through
the inter-play of improvisation, music, theatre and dance.
In an effort toward sustainable development
of this type of community learning 1st Framework have been assisting
groups to make their own websites with hyperlinks to strengthen
contacts across sectors They've been greatly assisted in this by
Community Action Network and Rural Development Agency who are currently
running joint training and support on First Class intranet systems.
With computer hardware supplied by Sainsbury's. The websites are
already helping in the development of projects to mark 2001 International
Year of The Volunteer. The original project website of 'Home' can
still be seen at www.can-online.org.uk/~home.
'All of us learned quite a lot', said
Peter. 'Although it's easy enough to make sure that people enjoy
themselves and have a good time, we do set high standards and take
a few risks in the interests of stretching people's imagination
and increasing their sense of achievement'.
1st Framework's latest partnership project
involves The Baylis Programme from English National Opera's Education
Department and a cast of local people from Southwark who are interested
in taking part in Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera.
'After volunteers for the chorus have
been recruited and we've held auditions for the main parts we'll
do some exploratory workshops so that everyone gets a sense of what
Brecht had a mind. We will be looking closely at the two film versions
- French and German made in Berlin by Pabst in the 30's with many
of the original cast. Pabst worked with Brecht and Weill and the
film has an intruiging ending, not at all as the play. In the film
the beggars do disrupt the Coronation Procession, while Mac languishes
in Jail Polly buys an old city bank with the gangs 'takings' , Mac
escapes, Tiger Brown 'confiscates' Macs bail just before he looses
his job as Head of Police , and later joins Mac, Polly and the Peachums
on the Board of a reputable old city bank.
After three performances in Bishopsgate
Goods Yard, Braithwaite Hall in Croydon and the Sands Film Studios
in Rotherhithe the production will return to the original film studios
in Berlin where Pabst made his film with Brecht and Weill. The studios
are now a very radical Adult Education Institute / Housing co-op
called UFA Fabrik . The first ideas about Threepenny Opera were
sparked off during an exchange visit between The Mary Ward Over
Sixties Drama Group and German Social Work Students from Berlin
in 1999 International Year of Older People. Maxine says ' Raising
money for this type of activity is very tough, people are often
totally mystyfied as to how we make the projects. Ageist attitudes
are changing slowly, but dismissive opinions about what older
people can
achieve are fairly depressing. I'll never forget a quote from one
of our oldest participants Babs Perry who suffered three massive
strokes but valiantly continued to tour with the projects 'without
a doubt the biggest obstacle people like me have to over come once
they have their stroke is other peoples low expectations of what
we can still achieve'.
Intergenerational projects provide employment
for young people in the creative industries, work experience for
students, community development opportunities and participation
in a high quality arts education project for older people. They
also bring home a wealth of information about other countries innovative
projects are distributed to practitioners in this field. When 1st
Framework got back from Australia having represented the UK as part
of International Year of Older People it made income from selling
the information sheets to local officers from the Departments of
Health and Education. The Australians are way ahead with strategy
and policies which address the issues of a rapidly aging society.
That presumably is why they were chosen to host International Year
of Older People.
Still on the funding issue Maxine explained.
'In our experience its a lot easier to raise goods and services
'In Kind' instead of cash, for example 'Japan Airlines gave us a
substantial reduction on our Australian tickets, sometimes we get
free use of a venue for the project or the free use of a couple
of rooms big enough to hold the workshops in. In the Midlands we
were working in very isolated locations with no food nearby. It
was winter, the volunteers and artists were fed each lunch time
by the Local Bangladeshi Women's group who were taking part in the
'Home' project. All these generous gestures, whatever scale, have
a great effect on the atmosphere and quality of the final product.'
No one who has seen the enthusiasm and
mutual learning generated by this kind of work - which is usually
done to exceptionally high standards despite shoe string budgets,
with aspirations and outcomes that are often difficult to 'sell'
to funding bodies, whose funding criteria don't always allow for
'joined up' initiatives across separate and different statuary
and voluntary organisations, on a local, national and inter-national
scale - could be in any doubt about its value and importance. It is
just the kind of response which will save ordinary people - especially
those in deprived communities and groups - from the worst excesses
of current policy directives, which seem determined to either reform
or reprimand the socially excluded in the name of neighbourhood
renewal.
Mary Ward was right. In the struggle
to promote 'equalisation' in society - or in today's language, 'greater
equity and social justice' - the poor and the overlooked still need
to share in the 'hundreds of pleasures and opportunities that fall
mainly to the rich'. A sound analysis and a rousing speech or two
from Keir Hardie and Sydney Webb no doubt helped to create and sustain
the labour movement at a critical moment in its history, but I would
bet money in the bank that it was also the pleasure to be gained
from taking part in collective and creative activities - for their
own sake - that also helped to lift the people's spirits when the
going was really tough.
Although I do accept that New Labour
- and the resources made available to counter social exclusion and
to promote community regeneration by the DTI and the DfEE- are concerned
about the intransigence of poverty, and about the accelerating gap
between the knowledge- rich and the knowledge- poor in our society,
it is important to remember that good community arts can help to
get in touch with the places that 'straight' policy and 'formal'
educational initiatives fail to reach.
If you are currently working in community
based education, or have any kind of responsibility for providing
community based learning in the 'brave new world' of the Learning
and Skills Councils, it is important not to underestimate the power
of ' the pleasure principle'. If you don't have contact with your
local arts organisations and community arts activists - its probably
time to get in touch. You may well discover just the right injection
of energy and idealism you could be looking for, and some good ideas
about getting local groups involved in activities that help to re-build
damaged solidarities and provide new opportunities for learning
- as well as taking time out to enjoy themselves.
THIS IS THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF ACCOUNTS
BY JANE THOMPSON OF VISITS SHE IS MAKING TO PROJECTS IN THE SEARCH
FOR INSPIRATION AND GOOD IDEAS TO SHARE WITH OUR READERS. IF YOU
ARE INVOLVED IN SUCH A PROJECT AND WOULD LIKE TO INVITE JANE ALONG,
PLEASE CONTACT HER AT NIACE
tel. 0116 2044275 or
email jane.thompson@niace.org.uk
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