Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Library work category.
Pollinating!
Did you know that certain plants can only be pollinated by bees? One of which, I believe, is the fabulous apple tree! Artificial pollination was found to be unsuccessful and bees are considered to be – the bees knees!
There have been LOTS of things happening at the Potting Shed recently – hence why the blog has been quiet the last few weeks. Here’s the buzz on what’s happening currently:
Somerstown Stories
- The project is in its final phase, but shows no sign of slowing down! Somerstown Museum is part of this: a temporary exhibition in an empty shop in St James Road, just off Winston Churchill Avenue. A preview evening will be on Thurs 19th July and the museum will be open to the public Fri 20th – Sun 22nd July. It’s being run by those talented chaps at NebMedia: http://www.nebweb.co.uk/ More info to follow.
- In addition there is a final exhibition taking place at Central Library in early July which will promote the Somerstown Archive which will be held and managed by the City Museum and Records Office. There are also plans to produce a book documenting the story of Somerstown and the project itself.
- Year 9 students from Charter Academy and Priory School are taking part in a specially designed charette led by Post-Grad Architecture students from the University of Portsmouth, who will be sharing their knowledge and skills on Somerstown. The School of Architecture students have been focussing on Somerstown this year in their studies, redesigning significant elements of the area and some key buildings.
- UK Community Summit – linked to Somerstown Stories, I’ve been invited to attend the first UK Community Partner Summit, which aims to build resilience and strengthen relationships between universities and community partners: http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/uk-community-partner-summit-0
Beyond Somerstown Stories, there are other interesting and intriguing things happening:
- Storytelling Club – this is a five week project running at Stamshaw Infants school. By the end of the project the children will have explored freeze-framing, storyboarding, and used Story Pegs and Story Cubes http://www.storycubes.com/
- Interpretor/Demonstrator at D-Day Museum – working with children to understand and explore the significance of the D-Day landings, using the Overlord Embroidery and artefacts from the period. Enjoyable, engaging, sobering and thought-provoking, I’m enjoying the work there and the chance to inflict my feeble French on some very patient teachers and students from Caen!
There are other potential projects in the pipeline, but I’m always interested in hearing ideas for new pieces of work, so if you’ve got an idea, drop me an email: sharon.court@gmail.com or call on: 07986-674709
Mr Scarlatini’s Magical Mystery Circus
As part of my on-going voluntary work with North End Library I’m running two Story & Craft sessions this summer. I quite often do a session during the school holidays, but this time I’ve decided to offer two linked sessions, with a story delivered in two parts. This is a new development of my work with the library, and the decision to run them in this way is partly due to the work I did at St Mark’s: http://www.apple-seed.org.uk/?p=31 We’ve not done it this way before, but I think its worth trying, and we’ll see what happens!
The story is called ‘Mr Scarlatini’s Magical Mystery Circus’ and is deliberately linked to the Summer Reading Challenge, which this year is called Circus Stars: http://www.circus-stars.org.uk/ I haven’t used any of the characters from the Reading Challenge, in case I’d be in breach of copyright, but it made sense to at least work with the theme!
As with so many of my children’s stories I have tested this one on my own children, and the times we’re most likely to have uninterrupted time is on the bus. Today, as I told them the dramatic finale, I am quite convinced that the elderly lady sitting on the seat in front of us was deliberately craning her head so she could hear what I was saying! There have been or two occasions when I’ve had to interrupt the flow of story, so we could get off, and someone sat nearby has said: “Oh, I was enjoying that!”
The only problem with a ‘bus story’ is that by nature the story is elongated and there are several short sections, which won’t work for a 20 minute library session! My task now is to select the best bits and edit the whole thing into a whole story that can be told in two sensible halves, while still having enough timbre and texture to make it interesting and memorable.
Like many authors, I’ve drawn on stereotypes to quickly get the audience up to speed with the setting and types of people, but I’ve also
I freely admit, its a stereotypical image, but its what I imagine when I think of Mr Scarlatini...
tried to add some unexpected elements (like knowing the performers real names, and where they came from). As you might expect, there’s a good smattering of mystery and some mild peril, which all contributes to making a good, sound story-telling session!
Look out for an update on how it went!