Fun Palaces

On Saturday 1 October 2016, I took part in Mansfield Museums’ first ever Fun Palaces event. “Fun Palaces is an ongoing campaign supporting culture at the heart of every community, with an annual weekend of arts and science action created by, for and with local people.” The Fun Palaces campaign began in 2014 by Co-Directors Stella Duffy and Sarah-Jane Rawlings, and producers Hannah Lambert and Kirsty Lothian. Their fabulous tagline is ‘Everyone an Artist, Everyone a Scientist.’

When Mansfield Museum’s Community Participation Officer, Sally Evans, put a call out for local people to get involved I couldn’t wait to contribute as I feel passionately about engaging local communities with cultural events.

Mansfield Museum, Mansfield Palace Theatre and The Old Library were brimming with fun, free Arts and Science activities for all ages. The Nottinghamshire branch of the British Science Association demonstrated how to make balloon kebabs, there were dancing robots, live music, animals from White Post Farm and many more exciting things to see and explore.

My activity took the form of a low tech animation workshop that explored the theory of persistence of vision via the creation of a thaumatrope (a toy that combines two images to create an early form of animation). Thaumatropes are easy to make and really effective. In short, visitors could get a taste of animation by creating a magic moving picture. The activity beautifully married Art and Science together in one activity, full STEAM ahead!

I have run animation projects in my previous role as Community Co-ordinator at Sale Grammar School and you can see an example of one of them here.

‘A Moveable Feast’ - Animation Project

‘A Moveable Feast’ - Animation project on Pearce Ward

Community Arts Coordinator, Clare Taylor and talented KS5 student, Meg worked with patients on Pearce Ward at Wythenshawe Hospital over three afternoons in October to produce a simple animated recipe. Pearce Ward is a recently refurbished and specially designed unit for inpatient Cystic Fibrosis patients. All patients are cared for in separate single rooms. The project was organised in conjunction with Helen Kitchen from Lime, one of Sale Grammar School’s Trust Partners.

We chose to focus on a quick and easy recipe, selecting fruit to work with as it is bright and vibrant. You may notice that the tray, plate and cutlery appear in every shot on the animation, this was to overcome the problem of continuity when we moved rooms to work with different patients. The photographs were then uploaded and edited back at school using Adobe Premiere Pro (thanks Mr W!).

Patients worked as animators on the stop motion film, painstakingly moving the plasticine fruit and magnetic letters for each section of the recipe. Meg, a budding animator, was hard at work behind the camera. I think it is fair to say that the sessions were a welcome break in patients’ treatment programmes. It was fantastic to see enthusiastic staff on the ward getting involved in the project by modelling fruit for the recipe. I was very impressed with the creativity of everyone that was involved. It seems that plasticine is irresistible to all age groups! You can see the completed animation ‘Fresh Fruit Salad’ here.

You might also wish to see ‘CrimeScene’ (scroll down page). The models were created by a patient who was in for a few weeks for treatment. Crime Scene is a gruesome yet imaginative animation where police (acted here by oranges) investigate the murder of the pineapple! Can you spot the villain?