Giant continues to develop work with and for schools.  Sometimes this is done in partnership with other organisations, for example, Making Links or because a school has asked us to work with them and, sometimes, Giant seeks to work with specific schools (Getting Together).

Our main interest is to develop partnership links between Special Educational Needs (SEN) and mainstream schools.  In addition, Giant is keen to engage with teaching and care staff and has delivered training in using the arts in the classroom.xsz

Productions can tour to schools as well as schools coming to see shows in other venues.  Sometimes we are able to offer workshops to accompany the show and for Up the Stairs and In the Attic we developed a resource pack for teachers working in SEN schools.

The company has also worked with students at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) to develop short pieces of inclusive theatre for schools: Amongst the Weather and Songs from the Desert.

Projects

Imagination Stations (November 2007)

Illuminating Links (September - October 2007)

World Beneath My Feet (October 2006 - January 2007)

Burp! (2006)
Washday Circus (2005)
Getting Together (2004)
Making Links (2004)
RSAMD (2004)
New Year (2004)
Two Halves Make A Whole (2002)

Click to find out more:

Theatre
Giant’s productions and projects relating to all things theatre

Visual Arts
Painting, pompoms, glitter, sculpting, making – find out more about Giant’s approach to Visual Arts

Events
From Hallowe’en to Food events and everything in between!

Training
How can you learn more about inclusive arts?

Imagination Stations (November 2007)

As part of Glasgow City Council's Inspiration Festival Giant transformed The Giant Workshop Space into a specially created environment inspired by famous artists and the imaginations of children.

Nursery aged children explored a playful world of artworks, colour and ideas stopping at activity stations along the way to take part in music, movement, drama and visual art activities.

Children were encouraged to play in the colourful painted world of a Paul Klee painting, using music and symbols, shapes, lines, splashes and sloshes to describe the world around.

They also interacted with the movement, reflections and sound of a Calder mobile, suspended with moving structures using manmade and natural material. A series of Picasso mystery sculpted heads were explored as children were encouraged to add to, build and take them to pieces.

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Illuminating Links (September - October 2007)

As part of a community project at Firhill Basin to celebrate the redevelopment of the Forth and Clyde Canal by British Waterways, Giant was commissioned by UZ Events to work with pupils from five local schools on a visual arts project.

The project involved creating lanterns which would be displayed on barges forming a procession at the canal to compliment six larger scale sculptures of local buildings created by lead artist Graeme Gilmour.

Over six weeks the Giant team worked with pupils from St Teresa's/Broomlea, St Gregory's, Our Lady of the Assumption, Sighthill and Ruchill / Ruchill Communication Disorder Unit. The pupils looked at the design of local buildings through sketching and photography and then created lantern sculptures from willow inventing their own design for the panels of the lanterns.

The project culminated in a procession of barges displaying the lanterns and a firework extravaganza lighting up the floating sculptures of local buildings which the children had chosen to be represented.

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World Beneath My Feet (October 2006 - January 2007)

Towards the end of 2006 pupils from three different geographically placed Scottish schools: one coastal (Drummore Primary, Dumfries and Galloway ) one rural (Forth Primary, South Lanarkshire ) and one urban (Ruchill Primary and Communication Disorder Unit, Glasgow) worked with the Giant visual arts team observing, exploring, and creating within their different environments.

Working with skilled environmental and video artists the children had the opportunity to experience a variety of art processes including drawing, sculpture, projection and animation using both manmade and natural materials to investigate their surroundings and produce associated artworks.

Communicating with their fellow schools by postcards, e- mail s, photographs and a specially created blog site they were able to share responses to the project as it developed and to understand more about their own environment and learn about the other environments too.

The culmination of the project and all the hard work by the pupils who took part was an exhibition in the Tramway in Glasgow showcasing the animations, sculptures and drawings created by the three schools.

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Burp! (January - March 2006)

This food themed animation project saw Giant's visual arts director and a media expert from Fast Forward Play working with pupils from primary schools Broomlea, St Teresa's and Saracen of the new Keppoch Campus in Glasgow.

The children had a great time talking and experimenting with food, learning how animation works and being involved in the animation process from the initial designing to the filming of animation characters and settings.

Everyone created their own foodie characters through drawing, plasticine modelling and using food stuffs and then went on to develop stories for these characters.

Working alongside a musician the children then created sound effects and music for their characters and stories.

The final result of all this hard work is a series of short animations together creating Burp! a 10 minute animation which was premiered for the participants and other pupils at a sharing day at the campus.

This animation is now available on DVD which also contains A Little Burp! theshorter version and The Making of Burp!

View some of the animation here soon!

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Washday Circus (2005)

On 19th March, friends and family attending the Family Learning Day at Thornliebank Primary School, Glasgow, were in for a treat!  Over 7 weeks, 21 children and 8 mums from local families worked together to devise a new piece of theatre.  The group made props, learnt new theatre and circus skills to form the Washday Circus which was performed twice to rapturous applause!

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Getting Together (2004)

Working with the Cultural Co-ordinators Giant worked with two schools in Paisley, Mary Russell and St John Ogilvie primary schools.  The aim of the project was to use performing arts to develop a relationship between an SEN and mainstream primary so that the children could meet and share experiences. 

The initial project was three weeks in the summer term of 2004.  The schools took it in turn to host the project and Mary Russell provided transport for both of the schools to use.

The theme of planets was chosen and three artists worked with the children on their planetary visits: a musician, a dancer and a drama artist.  Live music, scent and props were used to create the journeys and by the end of the three weeks, the children were at ease with each other.  Together they attended Up the Stairs and In the Attic and the schools ‘got together’ to share their sports day.

Towards the end of the year, artists returned to the school to work with children for another four weeks, again the relationship between the children was brilliant. 

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Making Links (2004)

Giant was invited by East Dunbartonshire to develop a new project in partnership with the RSNO, the Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre and two SEN schools, Merkland and Campsie View.

The two schools worked on either music or puppet making and then came together to rehearse a short devised piece of theatre.  The pupils worked with a movment specialist and used the music and puppets they had made in the previous weeks to tell a story of the sea.  The result was a wonderful performance for parents and friends hosted at Merkland school with accompaniment by some of the member of the RSNO.

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RSAMD

From January to March 2003, Giant worked with the second year students of the BA Contemporary Theatre Practice course at the RSAMD.  The students undertook theoretical and practical training in the development and delivery of inclusive arts.

Working with Giant, the students devised and performed two pieces of inclusive theatre aimed at primary age children – Amongst the Weather and Songs of the Desert.  Each piece concentrated on a specific age range the first was for Primary ages 1-3 and the second for Primary ages 4-7.

The project culminated in a one week tour to SEN and mainstream primary schools in Glasgow with 12 performances in 11 schools.

…the team found gentle ways of sharing the sensations with their enthralled audiences with a little gentle water spray, a yellow globe, a scatter of fake snow or a whirling ribbon.                                  Brian Hayward, TES Scotland

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New Year (2004)

Working with children from the Communications Disorder Unit at Barlanark Primary School to celebrate the new year using visual arts to explore hopes, dreams and aspirations.

The children worked to create 2d and 3d images of themselves using drawing techniques and claywork.  The children were introduced to ‘blind drawing’ where they had to draw somebody else’s face without looking at the paper they were drawing on (there was only a wee bit of cheating!).  The claywork represented the children’s heads and used different materials such as wool, string and buttons to add texture to their work.  They also created a group piece called a visual poem outlining their hopes.

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Two Halves Make a Whole (2002)

This project was the pre-cursor to Getting Together. 

Two Halves Make A Whole developed methods of working from the Artful Antics Project in summer 2001. The purpose of this project was to establish an inclusive group of children from a local SEN school (Broomlea) and a local Mainstream school (Jordanhill). Children from primary one were chosen in order to embed the relationship throughout their primary education.

Using visual arts, movement, music and drama the children worked with artists and their teachers, developing an empathy for each other and bringing together English and Makaton.

The workshops happened at weekly intervals in October and culminated in June with the children working together to create a piece of sculpture - a totem.

The totem is in two halves, each half representing the joint efforts of the group. As with all totems it tells a story of recorded events and the presence of certain individuals thus allowing each child the opportunity to make their own personal mark on the final piece. Following a celebration party at the end of the project, each school retained one half of the totem, representing their role in an exciting and unique project.

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Giant, Centre for Inclusive Arts,

100 Beith Street, Glasgow, G11 6DQ, Scotland, UK

Booking/Enquires: 0141 357 5000  Tel: 0141 334 2000  Fax: 0141 357 4100  Email:info@giantproductions.org  Web: www.giantproductions.org