The Ark Children’s Council Blog - Working with artists on the PUSH Project!

The Children's Council and the PUSH artists. Photo: Geraldine Heaney.

PUSH is an ambitious artist development project investing in the careers and work practices of artists working in the area of theatre and dance for young audiences, both in their own countries and internationally. PUSH is all about creating excellent art work which tells a more diverse range of stories. It’s a 2 year project and we are working with artists from all over Europe. You can read more about the project here.

We started our day just like any other, with Ali, Al and Liam leading games in the theatre. Our topic for the day was migration – and we began to talk about what this migration or immigration means to us. As a group we were aware of animal migration, but our discussion quickly moved on to talking about the different reasons people and families might migrate. We talked a lot about economic migration as well as about people who are forced to leave their home place because of war, famine, natural disasters and for many other diverse reasons.

We went upstairs to the workshop to meet Veronica Coburn and a group of 16 European artists who she was leading in a lab. There were many diverse artists from actors and writers to dancers, directors, visual artists and photographers. It was wonderful to have such a mix in the room. We played some “getting to know you” games as one huge group.

The group of artists had been talking a lot about immigration during their lab. Immigration is one of the major crisis issues within the EU community at present. The artists were looking at how different countries and cultures address this communal issue, in particular through theatre and dance for young people. A lot of what the artists were talking about, in terms of the arts and their relationship to civic care and active citizenship, resonated with our work on the Children’s Council.

The PUSH artists showed us some short work in progress based on the topics they had been discussing all week. The range of these pieces was amazing and we ended up using all parts of the building and seeing all kinds of different art work. A particular favourite was the postcard session with Maisie Lee. The children had to write postcards to children from different parts of the world who might be experiencing migration. Another session we loved involved a suitcase into which we had to throw our most precious items if we were told we had to leave at a moment’s notice. It was interesting to see what different people would bring. It ranged from food, mobiles, money to our pets and favourite teddy. One group decided to bring a unicorn! There were so many other wonderful pieces we saw that day, including a dance pieces and some physical theatre.

It was a fantastic day full of different art forms, different languages, approaches from different cultures and there was lots of fun and laughter. Many children said it was their favourite Council Session to date.

You can see some more of Geraldine Heaney's photos of the day below