Aim

To give rurally isolated youngsters a chance to gain skills in the arts, via creative workshops and theatre in a mythical Cornish setting.

Play It Again Theatre Company & Kilminorth Assembles Project

Young People in South East Cornwall are being hit hard by cuts to provisions such as youth services.  Play It Again are doing something about this!  With your help, 2016 will help us to deliver a 6 month project brimming with creativity for 11 to 18 year olds.

 Since 2010, Play It Again have brought top quality theatre and arts experiences to over 10,000 young people.  Our newly established Youth Committee have created ‘Kilminorth Assembles’ – a creative exploration of an ancient woodland with cornish folklore, celtic body art and willow sculptures, complete with the use of BSL for participants who are hard of hearing. 

Kilminorth Assembles

 What is our project about?

The bronze age ‘Giant's Hedge’ in Kilminorth Woods near Looe, Cornwall is rich with folklore and mystery.  Play It Again’s Youth Committee want to give local young people, community volunteers and young families  the opportunity to explore the heritage of this recreational space and form their creative response to it by creating sculptures made out of natural materials; they also want to share stories inspired by the Giant's Hedge with their local community in a summer outdoor performance and then, later in the year, a series of creative walks.

Who is it for?

The six month project that we have designed will give around 30 rurally isolated young people aged 11 to 18 the chance to gain qualifications and skills in the arts through a series of workshops at the woods with creative artists over a 12 week period from May to July 2016. The workshops are designed by Play It Again's Youth Committee and supported by a team of highly enthusiastic arts-focussed volunteers ensuring that our activities are interesting and exciting. These free-of-charge workshops will include playing Celtic instruments, dance, singing, willow sculptures, BSL and Cornish Language. There will then be a Big Summer Week during the school summer holidays when the participants will create  outdoor promenade theatre performances to which around 100 local young families will be invited.  In the autumn, the installations in the trees (natural sculptures) made for the promenade performance will be the focus of a series of half-day long creative walks, allowing walkers to explore the full extent of the Giant's Hedge and to forage for food along the way with Play It Again, the young people themselves and local professional foragers.  Throughout the 6 month project, young people will undertake their Silver Arts Award and will be working at A to C GCSE Grade.

What will young people gain from Kilminorth Assembles?

The aims of the project will be to enable young people to gain skills in the arts and get an arts qualification and we will also deter young people from anti-social behaviour in Looe and Liskeard by offering an exciting, positive and enriching alternative.  Finally, we want to enable young families to experience high quality theatre and enriching activities in their community by getting to know Kilminorth Woods as a beautiful place to visit free of charge.  We want the community to unearth and explore this wonderful recreational space, which is so often overlooked in favour of the beach culture in Looe.  We hope to enrich the lives of a wide range of community members both throughout and also beyond the life of this project.

Our previous work

Play It Again is a registered charity that develops and delivers arts projects that the whole community benefit from; the projects are designed by the Play It Again Youth Committee (comprising of previous project participants) and we have a strong support network of adult volunteers, along with a following of local young families who form our audiences. Play It Again’s projects are packed with young-people-friendly, skills-based arts activities.  Projects are focussed on connecting young people and the community with outdoor recreational spaces, be it the beach, the woods or a history-rich town centre by participating in 6 month-long programmes which galvanise positive relationships with other young people, community members and potential employers.  Our most recent project, ‘Konnichiwa Kernow’  was delivered in three stages over a six-month period and was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Plymouth University.  Firstly, harder-to-reach young people from various youth centres in South East Cornwall came together with adult volunteers from the community for 12 workshops to explore the historic links between Japan and the southwest.  Kendo, Dance, Calligraphy, Food, Puppetry and visits to both the Plymouth Art Gallery  and the Plymouth Historic Records Office were all part of the workshop mix.  Secondly, two one-week long summer schools then took place where the young people (supported by volunteers) created a piece of Promenade Theatre culminating in a Japanese ‘Village’ of activities for our audience of harder-to-reach families.  The village included costumes to try, kendo and street-dance demonstrations, sushi-making, manga art, kamishibai storytelling and making green tea; young families came to their community gardens to participate in the experience.  The final stage of the project saw the young people travelling to the International Japan 400 Festival where they performed their piece in the Hoe Gardens.  The project connected people of all ages and walks of life with recreational spaces using the platform of the arts.  You can watch a film about the project here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mg4YySiHQ&feature=youtu.be

This project successfully funded on 30th May 2016