Life in a Northern Town

The Life in a Northern town Summer project took place at the Gallery Oldham between 3^rd – 8^th August 2009. 22 Young people aged 11 – 25 engaged  through the phase 1 outreach sessions worked together with 6 arts professionals as a team to create and develop light graffiti images, short films, music, interviews and theatrical interventions based on positive images of Oldham. The Weeks project had firm objective but the aim was for the participants to take an active control of the direction of the research and production. This innovative and organic process worked incredible well and each young person was provided with the opportunity to feel a sense of ownership over their work and what was produced. Participants were introduced to all three elements over the first two days and then had the opportunity to focus on what they preferred to develop their skills in over the rest of the week. Participants had the opportunity to change groups throughout the week, working with other people and constantly developing their range of skills. Due to the amazing work produced throughout the week we wanted to enable the participants to show off their work and involved the public more. We did this by hiring a highly visible shop on the front of the Tommyfield Market and invited the general public to view what we had done throughout the week. This was done to complement the Festival of Diversity event ‘We made this!’ We displayed flat screen tv’s in the windows displaying our films and still images and ran editing and music production workshops where our participants acted as tutors for the general public. We invited the public to add their memories/ stories onto a giant map of Oldham and gave out 100 red helium balloons where members of the public wrote a happy memory of Oldham on a tag, attached it to a balloon and took someone elses happy memory. (complete with Oldham council logos, coloured tags and weights!) We estimate that over 300 people took an active engagement in the days activity. The town centre was a float with red balloons, music, and a general ‘Life in a Northern Town’ buzz!

3 discreet elements that worked together in harmony throughout the weeks project:

Documentary: Participants developed skills in journalism, documentary making, interviewing on camera, camera, phoography and music production skills.  Participants conducted over 20 interviews with the members of the public on camera

Gaming and Theatre: Participants developed knowledge of drama games, theatre techniques, costume design, theatre production, new writing and other theatrical skills.  They experimented with gaming initiatives and took these ideas onto the streets and introduces these elements to the public.

Editing and Technology: Skills developed included: Music production, editing, film production, light graffiti, multi media and artistic digital content experimentation.