More moves with Deaf Men Dancing..

On the Tuesday 11th of October, session; once again the Deaf Men Dancing group returned to put us through our paces, in the dance routines they had initially shown us, 2 weeks beforehand. I was amazed as to how much the group remembered and I believe it has helped many to become more spacially aware. This will be a great advantage for our performances in which movement is a huge element. The routines give the whole body a workout, and undoubtedly helped the group to relax after a long day at school and work.

 Sadly Deaf Men Dancing will not be returning until January. However we are now going to spend time developing our own routines, which will be greatly inspired by what Deaf Men Dancing have shown us. I look forward to the next session, and what will be I hope a very fun routine of our own.

Joshua Langley -Shed member and volunteer

Creative fun with geography!?!?

Tuesday 4th October 2011

Ugh! I was late! (Trust me and mum to get the timing wrong). Yeah got confused but still I didn’t miss anything important (I think). Anyways this week we had some ladies come over (forgot their names- I was all over the place, sorry!). But this week’s theme was geography really. I got to admit doing geography has never been so fun. (Okay, it wasn’t really geography but still it was looking at different cultures!). But yeah it was great fun and creative, regardless of the fact I seemed to have little to no knowledge about it. Oh well, after all the point is to have fun now, isn’t it?

    Elspeth Moss – Shed member

Fun and inspiration in Stoke Mandeville

I really enjoyed the shed trip to Stoke Mandeville! We all had a great time showing off our dance moves, and having fun! We also listened to an inspirational Paralympic talk from a gold medalist, which I really enjoyed listening to! Can’t wait to come again!

 Niamh Dennehy – Shed member

Meeting the gold medallist Paralympian John Harris…!!

Wednesday 28^th September 2011

Going to Stoke Mandeville was great! It was awesome to meet the music people, as I was the first person from shed there it was nice to talk to them a bit, make a few jokes, tell them it’s shed AT the park not shed IN the park (although I got to admit shed IN the park makes way more sense then AT the park…sorry I’m rambling now.) etc,etc. Anyways eventually some of the others came, there’s about 5 of us now and that was when John Harris arrived. We had heard about him on the second week so he was familiar although I didn’t place him until we started. It was brilliant listening to John’s stories (even though he had to stop half way though one or two them). Anyways after our lovely talk with John we saw Mark and the rest of the deaf men dancing. That I can’t say went too well as the week before I had put my arm wrong during dancing and pulled a muscle…and then this week I ignored it so it was a little painful. Plus we had to do disco dancing mostly (I’m only good at the hip-hop not the disco) and then my group’s dance routine went horribly wrong. But still all in all I had great fun! And having fish ‘n’ chips on the way home made it perfect, well perfect for me anyways.

 I really enjoyed the shed trip to Stoke Mandeville! We all had a great time showing off our dance moves, and having fun! We also listened to an inspirational Paralympic talk from a gold medalist, which I really enjoyed listening to! Can’t wait to come again!

Elspeth Moss – Shed member

Deaf Men Dancing and our first visit to Stoke Mandeville….

On the 27th September the dance group ‘Deaf men dancing’, came and led us in a session on 2 dances, the disco and the hip hop inspired. They were very energetic and kept the whole group entertained and we certainly learned a thing or two about movement.

On Wednesday the 28th we went to Stoke Mandeville Stadium and once again practiced dancing with the troop, who now helped us to develop our own dances; which were very unique. While we were there we met an extremely inspiring paralympian who made it clear to us all, why the project we are doing is very worthwhile.
We will also be working with different groups from around the world, which really epitomizes the Olympic and Paralympic spirit. I very much look forward to continuing this project. It should be great.

Joshua Langley – Shed member and volunteer

Looking at the movements needed to be a paralympic athlete…

On the 20th September, after our inspiring visit last week we started looking at physical theatre. We looked at movement based around sports in the Olympics/Paralympics, firstly acting out the normal movement. We then took this a step further, looking at the actions involved with the movements and listed the various verbs e.g pushing, pulling, side to side. Using just the words we interpreted them in our groups into various actions, which we shared with the other groups

- Matt Reynolds (shed member and volunteer)

Rachel introducing the project

 

Our first meeting with Rachel Gadsden for Shed@ThePark’s Paralympics project!

We met with Rachel for the first time on Tuesday it was fantastic as we got to find out more about this new exciting project to do with the paralympics. As she explained the project I realised there was truly something for everyone to do and it sounded like lots of fun. SO I can’t wait for next week to see this project unfould even more! 

- Hannah Greenacre (Shed member and volunteer) -