Past Projects:

In The Picturegram was a dance and digital arts based project. We worked with Sutton High, a mainstream school in Cheshire and Palmerston, a special needs school in Woolton, Liverpool. Red Octopus visited the schools for one hour a week each week to create dance material and to communicate with the other school via video conferencing. The young people had a diary room where they could speak their thoughts freely. We filmed the dance rehearsals and the group could say a big ‘hello’ and ‘good-bye’ to the other school. We used the footage to create a short documentary. On the day of the performance the schools met for the first time. We had a ‘get to know you’ workshop and warmed up together. We had a great audience for the performance! The feedback was fantastic for this project and we hope to do a project of a similar nature again very soon!

Moonlight and Movement was a similar project in terms of bringing young people together, but we worked with four special needs schools. The project was based on fairy tales, myths and fantasy. Each school was a different group of characters (Fireflies, Pixies, Fairies and Goblins). This project used a variety of arts skills such as movement, drama, poetry, water-play and visual arts. It was really beneficial for the young people to meet other young people in a new environment.

The Rainbow Fish project took place in one school working with a much smaller number of young people. We used games, songs, dances and visual arts based around their current topic of study (the Rainbow Fish book). We encouraged the young people to create the whole piece, from designing the set to learning a line each. It was a very successful, innovative and exciting project which ended in a great performance.