Hoeben’s Blog

For the past 15 years I have been involved in setting up international exchange programmes with Grassroots Theatre Company (GTC), a Zimbabwean performing arts company that specialises in Theatre for Development. In the past two years, the company has been running a festival called Sangansai Children’s Festival (SCF) in Masvingo, a rural district of Matableland in Southern Zimbabwe. The aims are to work with disadvantaged rural communities helping to raise awareness of social, health and general developmental issues affecting poverty, whilst also providing children with a sense of cultural pride and, of course, enjoyment. Children from local primary and secondary schools work with Grassroots’ facilitators for six weeks prior to the festival in preparation for a series of performances to a local audience of around 3000 people.

The festival is an ideal platform for developing  international links between children in the UK and Zimbabwe since GTC visit the UK every year, currently visiting Wales, Yorkshire, Norfolk and Scotland, and could help to facilitate communication. I was imagining the opportunity for a video-sharing project, where children could create a short 1-minute clip sharing a talent, which could be collated and projected during intervals during the festival. Likewise, our partnerships in the UK could help to build up a database of videos that could be continually added to.

Below is a short video of a parade with some of the participants from the festival singing through the village:

To find out more about GTC, visit their website or blog. If you are a teacher and interested in such a project or have other ideas, please get in touch.

This was a quick and easy slideshow using PulpMotion that transforms your pictures into a virtual gallery. I enjoyed showing this to my Year 7s using images of their own sculptures. You can also include video and a soundtrack.

Kiel Johnson’s Cardboard Twin Lens Reflex Camera Time Lapse from Theo Jemison on Vimeo.

My A-level students can only just about create a pin-hole camera using a pringles can….

Goollery is a site that documents the many projects that have been created using google-related applications. Below is an example of one such use where the user has created alphabet shapes using Google Earth. Please click here to visit the Gollery site.