Look At Me
Look at Me is a series of 10 free arts projects for young people aged 10 to 16 in North Plymouth. The project runs over two years, until July ‘08 and is funded by the Heritage Lottery. Each sub-project in the Look at Me collection runs from one day to twelve weeks and is lead by a professional artist. All work produced during Look at Me will become part of Plymouth’s City Archive for future generations to enjoy.
Aims of the Look at Me project
The Look at Me project was set up to help young people in North Plymouth connect with their heritage and the wider Plymouth community using the arts. So far the Look at Me team have completed four projects, a visual arts, dance and film-making project, as well as a summer project which involved many different art forms.
Self portrait
Self Portrait was the first project in the Look at Me collection and ran from January to March 2007. Participants aged 6 to 11 created portraits using a variety of media, including chalk and charcoal, wax resist, drawing, painting and clay. Each session looked at different local artists who worked in Plymouth and the surrounding area in the 1920’s to the 1950’s. Some work created during Self-Portrait was exhibited at Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery in May 2007 as part of the Museum’s Lord Snowdon exhibition. Some participant’s artwork is still on display at Plymouth Pavilions, or is part of a display currently touring venues in North Plymouth.
Time to dance
GCSE dance students from Sir John Hunt and Estover Community Colleges joined forces in Look at Me’s third project Time to Dance. Time to Dance was lead by Attik Dance over 7-weeks and explored a variety of dances from the past including Ballroom, the waltz and more traditional dances local to Plymouth, such as the Devon broom dance. This project culminated in a final dance performance in June at the Soundhouse in North Plymouth, which also included dances by professional Burlesque, and 20’s dancer Fay Geldof-Dowling. The Time to Dance group also linked up with Attik Dance’s over 60’s dance group: Chance to Dance for the final show. This project was run in partnership with the South West Film and TV Archive, who supplied footage of dancing in the local region throughout the last decade for the project.
Scenes through the century
Scenes Through the Century was run for a week in August 2007 with a group of young people from North Plymouth Playschemes.
Each day the group explored a different decade using the arts. On Monday they focussed on the 1930’s and learnt dances from the era, such as 'Bumps-A-Daisy, 'The Hokey Kokey' and 'The Floral Dance', which they performed in the garden at Saltram House in traditional costume.
Tuesday was Evacuee day. Again the group got to dress up in 1940’s clothes, this time to experience life as an evacuee leaving Plymouth at the beginning of the war. The group went on a steam train to the country for the day and were encouraged to role-play evacuees, and to think about how they might have felt and behaved if they had been evacuated.
On Wednesday it was the 1950’s. With lashings of ginger beer and a mystery to be solved, we focused on fun pastimes and children’s adventures on a picnic day out at Mothercombe Beach. Assisted by the stories of Enid Blyton we relived the times Famous Five style! The group also got to do a treasure hunt.
Each day we took lots of photographs and film footage - which we edited and aged top resemble the media of that era. The project also won an award at The Motion Plymouth Film Festival for the film 'Evacuation' made during this week.
Amanda Buckley from Fireapple Films led the week’s activities. The week ended with a fun fashion show focusing on the 1980’s, an era not to be missed!
Jukebox
Fancy joining a band? Playing a live set? Creating a radio show? Well, with the next exciting instalment in the Look at Me collection - Jukebox you can do all this and more. Working alongside a professional musician you will get to explore many different styles of music from all different eras. This ran from the Soundhouse between November and December 2007.
Our heritage
Our Heritage is perhaps our most exciting project so far. For this project The Look at Me team have been given the job of replacing the artwork on the pillars of the shopping precinct below ASDA supermarket in Estover. We’re looking for community groups in North Plymouth who are keen to get involved and come up with ideas about what we can display here. There are already plans to work closely with some of the groups based at The Elm Community Centre, Students from Estover Community College, as well as with the local primary schools, but we need as much community help as possible if this project is going to be a success.