We’ve been taking part in a Interreg funded  New Writing South project called ‘Notre Ville by the Sea’. You can read more about our the project and our first days here.

Our final performance in France was to the general public in Cayeux-sur-Mer on Friday evening, to open their arts festival ‘Les Mousaillons’. Even after a tiring day, the young people really gave it their all and produced their best performance yet. We had the whole room joining in singing and clapping along with our French sea shanty ‘Santiano’ at the end and we were all on a real high when it finished.

As we set off home on the ferry the next day, some of our writers wrote about our few days in Cayeux, so I will hand over to them:

Amber:

Throughout the week we did drama and writing workshops. They were fun, and helped us make the finished product. My best bit about the whole project was the drama work with Clare and Gilbert. It was fun and lovely and we all really showed odd our skills when it came to acting.

When we did the performance at the end in front of the public, everyone was really nervous. It went very well and was very successful. The English and French children got along really well and we made good friends with the French children. It was good fun and everyone can’t wait to meet in April again!

A poem by Eddie:

‘Notre Ville by the Sea’

Walking, treading, stumbing
going, leaving, gone
sometime, forever, indefinitely
darkened what once shone.

Leaving the hostel,
shutting up shop
running away
a show to top.

And yes, we do have a show to top! In April the French young people and artists from ‘La Passe Muraille’  will be returning for a week of workshops in Brighton. We’ll be putting on a special performance of our work here at on Saturday 14 April at the Pavilion Theatre, Brighton. Find out more at here.

A big thank you to New Writing South for inviting us to be part of this fantastic project! And thank you to everyone who helped with the trip and made it such fun. We hope you can join us to see our performance in April.

We’ve been taking part in a Interreg funded  project commissioned by New Writing South called ‘Notre Ville by the Sea’. You can read more about our first days here.

We performed a second time in the secondary school – as you can imagine, everyone was a bit nervous of performing in front of young people their own age! But we got a great response and after this we felt ready for our evening debut.

In this photo you can see Joe and Pearl both reading out two of their poems during our St Valery performance, accompanied by a girl from the French group playing the flute and the rest of us swaying and bobbing as if we were in the sea! Pearl and Joe both wrote great poems. Here they are:

‘The Sea’ by Joe

I gaze forlornly out to the horizon
The sea, calm as a baby, shivers
Waves leap out of the sea, a new sculpture each time
Dolphins pirouette as they sing their cheerful song
Hopeful sharks glide proudly towards the ship.
The weather changes
Clouds fire their lethal bolts at the boat
Hail pelts our faces and the sea churns out waves of fury
A single sorrowful whale moans its terrible tune
The boat starts breaking up, creaking and groaning
My head goes under to a wonderful new world.

Two poems by Pearl

1.

Swing dancing on a 20s cruise ship
daydreaming on an 80 foot yacht
paddling far in a tiny kayak
floating away in a pure green coracle.

2.

The angry sky in an undersea world
full of krill, squid and plankton
dolphins spin up into the clouds
whales flick their tales up to God.

See more photos from our performance and trip on Flickr.

We’re in Cayeux-sur-Mer in France, working on a project commisioned by New Writing South and ‘La Passe Muraille’. Today we have been putting everything together for our performance tomorrow. Here’s Stani’s thoughts:

‘Stani here, I don’t currently have a Youtube channel but me and William will be making one called ‘Green Pie EW’ or somethng similar. We will do our big performance tomorrow. We have been practising French songs and actions. The French children have been nice to us and we have been practising our French. (It’s fantastic. No boasting!)’

We’ve had a packed day here in Cayeux on the New Writing South project, ‘Notre Ville by the Sea.’ Today we met the twelve French young people we are working with here in Cayeux and who will be visiting us in Brighton in April. All the young people were put into mixed French/English groups and then took part in rotating one hour workshops in physical theatre, art, sound and writing. All the material they produced is going to be put together to make a final performance on Friday.  We’ve had lots of fun learning a French sea shanty, watching six of our writers do a great comedy performance of Brighton characters, playing with pebbles, microphones, soundscapes, words and poetry. Here’s a very random (his words) summary from Leo:

‘Hey blog readers, I’m Leo. Watch my Youtube channel, read my blog ‘Who cares‘ and follow me on twitter. Well anyway, I’m in France. La Francais! Now anyway, here in Frnace there are fewer people than in Brighton. Small town. I’ve had lots of fizzy cola bottles. FIZZLY.

P.S this post is intentionally random.’

You can see more photos of what we’ve been up to on our Flickr photostream.

Find out more about New Writing South on their website.

Our Little Green Pig writers have arrived in France! We are taking part in a project commissioned by New Writing South and french company ‘La Passe Muraille’ called ‘Notre Ville by the Sea.’  Twelve of our young writers aged from 10 to 16 have travelled to Cayeux-sur-Mer in northern France, where we’ll be working with twelve French young people from a local school to take part in writing, drama, art and sound workshops. Accompanying us is English writer Rosanna Lowe, plus Clare and Gilbert from Unpacked Theatre. We’ll also be working with French artists and writers too, and at the end of the week we’re putting on a spcial performance of the work we’ve created to open Cayeux’s festival, ‘Les Mousaillons.’.

Highlights from the our first day include having fun exploring the ferry on our crossing to Dieppe, running around on the beautiful beach at sunset (see photo!), a twilight spooky tour of a lifeboat muesum and trying to guess what on earth Leo was trying to act out in charades (we gave up after ten minutes). Tomorrow we will be diving into our first day of workshops and I’ll be handing over to our young writers to give you their updates about our trip. Thank you to New Writing South for inviting us along on this great project!

Ella

We had fun a few sessions back in our Saddlebacks group chopping up and rearranging  newspaper headlines and using them to write news stories. Here’s 13 year old Eddie’s witty story on an out-of-control toddler:

He Can Do Whatever But We Can’t Do A Thing

Oliver Wilson has become the world’s youngest serial thief. After being filmed participating in the London looting and having reported to the local police over 70 times, the East London community is in despair. He has been headlined over the globe as the hooded hooligan and his parents are disgusted with his attitude. They have been evicted from several estates due to their infant son’s  ASBOs and cruel behaviour. He has been said to have started his antisocial behaviour at 18 months when he scared a fellow infant with a broken rattle at a “Mummy and Me” Class and his behaviour has gone downhill from then. Though his behaviour is intolerable, psychotherapists say there is still hope. But with 20 thefts, 9 assaults and even 1 attempted murder, is there really a place for this crime fiend? Even if there is, it cannot be found in London as he has only two regions he is allowed to be in. It seems life is not going to be easy for this heartbroken family.

A big congratulations goes out to Hannah, one of our writers in our Saddlebacks group. Hannah was a winner in the Television category in the The Guardian’s young arts critics 2011 competition, with her hilarious review of reality TV show ‘The Bachelor’. You can read Hannah’s winning entry here on The Guardian website – just scroll down to find her piece.  Well done Hannah, we’re sure we will be seeing more of your future writing in print.

A few weeks ago with our Piglets and Spots writing groups, we wrote from the perspective of animals. Seven year old Morgan from the Piglets group chose to write from the perspective of a tortoise – not just any household tortoise though, but a tortoise who lives in Africa:

Tortoise

I wake up and smell leaves. I can see a panther. I wander over the leaves very slowly. I eat the big leaves. I can hear the tiny hummingbirds, stealing the webs from the spiders. I can hear the rhinos fighting with their clunking horns, and a howler monkey howling.

Isn’t the line about the hummingbirds great?  If you could be any animal for a day, what would you be?