Generator Training Opportunity

Are you a primary or secondary school teacher living and/or working in the North East of England?

Are you interested in poetry?

Would you like to train to teach poetry in the classroom using the Winning Words Generator Game?

 

If you answered yes to any of the above you may be interested in applying for a place on the Generator training evening at Teesdale School, Barnard Castle, Co. Durham.

North East poet Jeff Price will deliver the training in the school’s I.T. suite on Wednesday 23rd May from 4.00 – 5.30p.m.  Places are free but must be booked in advance.

Generator is the new online interactive poetry game designed to help you and your pupils make your own Winning Words inspired by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The site is suitable for all ages.  You can select a level and genre and start to create your own poems straight away.

You can share your work and upload it through a range of online platforms.

Teachers’ notes at primary level are available on Haiku, Shape and Performance Poetry.  Those for secondary cover Sonnets, Raps and the Imaginative Voice.

Each set of notes covers the history and background of the genre  as well as providing creative exercises, inspirational videos and a poetry glossary.

For further information about twilight training sessions or how you and your school can become involved in the Barnard Castle Winning Words project e-mail: judith@barnardcastlenest.org.uk or mobile: 07808 063944.

 

 

Special Edition Bronze Arts Awards

Arts Award

NeST art gallery and Turrets Youth Theatre Group have teamed up to deliver Special Edition Bronze Arts Awards to young people drawn from across the area. The awards are being delivered by arts award advisers Judith Lesley Marshall and Jill Cole as part of the Winning Words project.

When Barnard Castle was chosen to be one of the seven beacon towns for the cultural olympics in 2012, we proposed to work with schools, youth groups and the local community to produce poetry for interpretation into an art installation.

Now that the local competition is underway we have turned our attention to workshops for the young people.  (For details of the competition see previous post)

Winning Words have designed an online interactive computer game called ‘Generator’ which is a bank of words on olympic themes and values.  Words are generated as a stimulus to producing raps, sonnets or performance poetry.

Thinking along similar lines the young people from Turrets are working with words found in Charles Dickens’ eight poems as a starting point for creating new poems.  These will be performed to an invited audience on the 20th June – the day the Olympic flame is due to pass through the town.

The performance will complement the much acclaimed Nicholas Nickleby play developed by a different Turrets theatre group.  The two groups will come together to provide an evening of entertainment at NeST gallery in Newgate, Barnard Castle.

Young people working towards their Bronze Arts Award will also attend and review other arts events, study an arts hero/heroine of their choice and share their skills with others in a form of apprenticeship.  Young people document their journey in portfolios which can include audiovisual, digital and written information as well as photographs and illustrations.

We are delighted to be able to offer this opportunity to young people from three secondary schools in the area and hope that we will be able to secure funding to enable them to progress to silver and gold awards.