A couple of weeks ago, along with about 300 other people, we made our way to the Medina Theatre to hear more about the fantastic St George’s Dragon Project.
Although we knew quite a bit about the great work of the project already – it was a real bonus to see the photos and hear directly from those involved about the impact that the project has had on the students at not only St George’s School, but students from other schools who benefit also.
Nigel George, founder of public artists Ecclestone George, who works closely with the school, talked us through how the project started.
He explained how Dragon started life as a project called Making Sense. The idea, with Creative Partnerships, Southampton and Isle of Wight project, was for teachers and students of St George’s to work with a professional team of artists and designers to create a sensory trail around the outdoor grounds of the school.
In Nigel’s words,
Whilst the idea was to build a sensory trail that would benefit the teachers and students of the school in the long term, this aspect of the project was always secondary to the main objective. It was proposed that by teaching creative thinking and practical skills techniques, all aspects of the school curriculum would be drawn in to the project. The project hoped to show that academic questions can be answered using practical skills to creatively solve problems. Risk taking, brainstorming, evaluation, innovation, failure and success were all expected to be part of the creative learning exercise and were experienced by students, teachers and partners alike.
It was because of the success of the 12 month long Making Sense project that teaching staff, students and artists felt confident enough to take the scheme to a new level and hence Dragon was born!
Following the presentation by Nigel and Deputy Head Mrs Weldon, we were treated to some superb live music.
The first band to play were Lucid. Blue and Sunny Brown (who you might remember from amongst other things, the Ventnor production of We Will Rock You), played along side guitarist/vocalist Ollie Dulcie, with Nick Potts on violin and Dave Shelton on drums.
We’ve seen Lucid play live before, but on a much smaller scale. Their performance was fantastic and the response from the audience was testament to that. Sunny and Blue’s vocals are hauntingly beautiful and Ollie’s not bad either! They really reminded us of a young Fleetwood Mac, which we hope they’ll be flattered by, but with their own special twist.
The strings of Nicks’ violin add another dimension to the songs and the final track they played which was one he’d written was a fantastic finale.
If you get a chance to see Lucid play live, we’d highly recommend it. Judging from their list of upcoming shows (check their MySpace), looks like they’ll by pretty busy over the summer. You can catch them at the Pilot Inn this coming Friday.
We had to leave at the interval so sadly missed out on the Wild Oats set, but are sure they rocked the crowd just as much as Lucid.
For more images of the St George’s Dragon Project, check out their photostream on Flickr Stream
