Nursery children went to a London cinema to see the world premiere of an animation film they had made themselves. Catherine Gaunt was there to see what it was all about
Imagine a nursery where pink spaghetti, a blue cow and toy dinosaurs come alive. It sounds far-fetched, but the children of Triangle Nursery School in Clapham, south London, were able to conjure up these images for the big screen in their very own animation film, 'The Living Nursery'.
The idea grew out of the nursery's 'Draw a story' project, financed with funding from Creative Partnerships, a national 40m initiative managed by the Arts Council of England. The nursery, a Beacon school, put in a bid to become a Creative Partnership school in April last year and is the only nursery to have received funding in the south London area.
The first phase of the programme started in April 2002 in 16 areas of deprivation and involves 361 schools. Funding was announced earlier this year to extend the scheme to cover 88 neighbourhood renewal areas in England by 2006. Its aim is to foster a proactive approach to creativity, with schools putting forward their own proposals and the partnership providing the backing and funds to make them happen.
Deborah Hardy, head teacher at Triangle Nursery, says, 'The great thing is there are no barriers to what we can think about doing in terms of creativity.'
The nursery children, aged three and four, went on trips to museums and galleries, including the British Museum and the National Gallery, and had visits from storytellers and artists. The nursery wanted to build on the story theme and involve the children's artwork. Ms Hardy says, 'We wanted to extend the children's stories. They are used to telling stories through pictures and animation automatically moves this on.'
Creative Partnerships South London put the nursery in touch with an animation education organisation called D fie foe and provided support and funding for the film, which cost around 4,500. This included planning meetings, four days of filming in the nursery and post production time. There are nearly 90 pupils at the nursery and nearly all of them are shown in the film with the chance to get as involved as they wanted. They chose the toys that are animated and were able to watch shots played back on a screen, almost instantly. Ms Hardy says this had the added bonus of holding the children's attention.
She says, 'The project encapsulates how our children work. They became so absorbed in what they were doing.'
The eight-minute film - part animation, part live-action - follows a typical nursery day. The opening scene shows children dropped off at the nursery gate in the morning and taking part in activities and play, inside the nursery and in the garden. Gradually the nursery becomes alive - the neon pink spaghetti the children are playing with starts to wriggle and children's pictures of a blue cow and colourful butterflies fly from the walls. There are dancing jam tarts in the kitchen play area and toy dinosaurs walking around the sandpit. Beads on a giant abacus move of their own accord, pots and pans rotate on the toy cooker and Lego appears to build itself.
The children even contributed to the film's soundtrack of tambourines, drums, cymbals, glockenspiels and xylophones, created from recordings of their music sessions. Jonathan Charles of D fie foe explains, 'The audio designer took what the children had done and sampled it to make new loops. There are no other extra instruments in there and I think it's really added to it.'
Once the film was finished Martha Hardy, Triangle's Creative Partnership's project co-ordinator, approached the education department at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton about screening the film. She says, 'One of the main things we wanted to do was enable children to see their work on the big screen and see their pictures on a wall in a gallery setting.'
Earlier this month all the children and parents were invited to the world premiere of 'The Living Nursery' and an exhibition of pictures from the 'Draw a story' project was held in the cinema foyer.
Deborah Hardy says the project has extended the children's confidence and experience and that seeing the final product in the cinema has made it something important for them.
She adds, 'It will be interesting to see what the children's reactions will be like now, to see what they think about what they watch on television. Even if it's just, "Now I know how the Teletubbies move!"'