Educational programme

HENLEY : OXFORD : DIDCOT : FARMOOR : WATERWAYS WALKS

HENLEY

1. Project entitled ‘Go with the Flow’ produced by Shout, an Arts Education organisation funded by the Henley Festival Trust.

The project will take musicians, a dance company, a poetry organisation and a composer to 12 schools in the Henley area in the Spring of 2007 to devise a performance piece about the waterways to be performed on 15th July 2007 at the Henley Festival. The creative experts working with the children are as follows:-

• Jazz: Andy Baker, head animateur of Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra working with a group of specially selected Jazz musicians
• Dance: Motionhouse Dance
• Poetry: Hammer & Tongue performance/slam poetry group
• Song: Harvey Brough (of Harvey and the Wallbangers), composer of Henley Festival Commission 2005

Over 500 children will be involved in the workshops and performances. The July event will be free of charge and seen by the substantial festival audience boosted by the publicity provided by the Go with the Flow project for Oxford Inspires.

2. Photography, painting and music-making with Special Needs pupils from secondary schools.

Projects have focussed on the central themes of Go with the Flow – water, conservation, and the river. Artists and educators include the photographer Jil Orpen (who is working on a major portrait project on Thames people), the Oxford Concert Party, and artists from the Henley area. The River and Rowing Museum and the Henley Fine Arts Society are partners in supporting this.

OXFORD

1. OLD MAN RIVER

Produced by Oxford Concert Party, a group of six professional musicians who play music from around the world, led by Arne Richards. Arne is an inspirational Music Therapist who brings music-making to people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to experience it – in deprived schools, prisons, hospitals, rural communities and residential homes for the aged. Their educational work has won them national acclaim.

The Oxford Concert Party worked in two separate inner-city primary schools in March 2007 on a music and drama project inspired by the theme of water.

2. OPEN DAY ON THE RIVER:

May 7, Donnington Bridge, Oxford

• Boat racing from Bangladesh, Italy and the UK
• Music, schools performances, exhibitions
• Food (healthy, multi-cultural)
• Boat club open days, with free trial sessions
• Traditional skiffs
• The Environment Agency’s ‘Robofish’ underwater film unit
• Music, films and barbecue in the evening.

DIDCOT

SUMMER PICNIC ON THE LAKES

At the invitation of Didcot First, a poetry/performance workshop will be run at local schools on the theme of water and rivers. The students’ poetry will be performed at the Didcot Lakes Summer Picnic in late June.

FARMOOR RESERVOIR

June 23-4
Open weekend at Thames Water's Farmoor Reservoir, with music, boat rides, bird watching, nature walks, painting and photography workshops, and free trial sessions in fly-fishing and sailing.

WATERWAYS WALKS

RURAL OXFORDSHIRE

A series of five weekend walks over the summer in and around different water landscapes around the county, led by expert guides. Locations and areas: Tadpole Bridge, Cropredy, Witney, Cholsey/Wallingford.