About the Project:

Games Time is a community celebration that brought the spirit of the Olympic Games to Skegness – next year it moves on to three other East Midlands Venues, it an exciting geographical game with the East Midlands as the board. This was one of the many diverse events that will make up the 2011 Skegness SO Festival.

The costumes were designed by international designer Clary Solandy (see opposite),who set up the London based Mahogany Studios many years ago and creates carnival costumes for carnivals and events  all over the world. 

The spectacle is based on games and challenges, the design influence for the four teams (red, yellow, blue and green), came from chess sets and pieces, many of which are carved in mythical animal likeness's. The Red team are conceived around the Phoenix, the yellow around the Minotaur, the blue around the chimera and the green around the dragon.

My part in the event was to involve local groups to be part of the project by delivering workshops where people who find it difficult to be involved in this type of event can be made to feel part of these creative community events. I worked alongside three other artists from the East Midlands area, Nicki Gardner, Sheila Pierce and Tina Waller.

We worked with a wide variety of groups throughout the area, I worked with Interskill at Louth, The ECO Centre Skegness, Skegness Learning Disabilities Group, a group from my local village, Addlethorpe and Autism Care Uk's supported living complex at Great Gonerby, Grantham.

It would have been impossible for the groups to create the entire costumes and so they were asked to create some of the smaller parts of the costumes for the cast of 150. below are images from the workshops and the people and workers that participated in the creation of this spectacle.

 

Clary Solandy at the first  rehearsal with the dance

group at the Jerwood Space in London

 

The power force  from the yellow team

 based on the mythical Minotaur. (4mts.in height)

Workshops with the Louth Interskill Group. Interskill is a charity organisation which helps people with a variety of problems to feel a valued member of the community, they make wooden sheds and chalets, garden trellis's, fence panels and fences. The people who work here work with large templates and actually make these item, so if you need any of the above go along to their website and have a look at what the make with the support they get they turn out excellent products. Their website is http://www.louthinterskill.co.uk

We were supposed to be making the leg and arm bands but the group worked really well on the first session so for the first half of the second

session they made and designed there own crowns as Kings and Queens of Interskill.

This young man really took to painting the the leg bands he merged the shade

of green really well and produced more than anybody else in the groups I

 worked with, and they were all of excellent quality into the bargain.

The entire group at Interskill both support workers

and those with learning difficulties were a pleasure

to work with, thank you all for you time and effort.

Workshops with Skegness Learning Disabilities Group: This was another lovely group to work with and a special thanks to the support staff who were magnificent, they made sure everyone was able to have a go at making or painting some part of the costumes.

Workshops at Skegness ECO Centre: This workshop I did jointly with artist Tina Waller and involved a local young mothers group, who naturally brought along the kids and we all had a really enjoyable afternoon.

Young mum's with their kids outside the ECO Centre's classroom.

Two volunteers who came along with Tina to the session.

Workshop's with Autism Care UK: I am still waiting on permission to use photographs from these workshops and as soon as I have it I will post some images in this section. I hope this will be soon because I work a lot with young adults who are on some part of the Autistic spectrum.

All of the groups worked immensely hard to complete the work we had to get through so I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to you all. THANK YOU. Below are images from the final show so you can see the finished product they were part of producing.

Games Time, Skegness.

The main body of the cast

 

The Yellow King and Queen.

Blue Chimera and defenders.

 

The Executioners

 

The Red King

 

The Green dragon

 

The pawn like figures from three of the teams, you can see the leg bands that the groups have worked on.