The initial idea of creating a play and teaching it to children was created by my tutor Julian. The plot and characters were created by myself and the rest of my group (Jaz, Hope, Will, Charlie, Fred, and Izzy). In order to do this, we sat down and had our first meeting with Julian. At first, Julian took the lead by explaining the idea of creating a play, and then my group and I created mind maps and storyboards to think of plots, characters, and songs. With this, then came writing new material and changing words to already established songs. This process went really well, apart from the odd disagreement about lyrical content with Julian. My group and I thought that we should have been entitled to a little more say than what Julian was giving us and so we discussed this with him and the matter was resolved. I think that the whole process of creating the actual product went smoothly. It was good that the client and product were chosen for us, as it meant that we could model and change bits we didn't like and then get down to the practical side with the kids by running sessions at Broadlands Primary School.
We, unfortunately, had an interruption in the creative process of this project when Julian was no longer able to tutor us. Luckily by this point, most of the play was completed, but there was still plenty to do, such as script writing and planning sessions with the children and actually meeting the children. Pete who took over the tutor role in the project did a great of catching us up to speed and making things happen with the primary school, such as arranging sessions and meetings which the teachers and students. He also created all of the audio for the play. This was vital as, in our sessions, we needed to teach the children how to sing the songs we had created.
The sessions with the school were our first major fall as we found that there was a huge lack of interest from the teachers and a few of the students. It was vital to have teachers on board and help to make the project run as smoothly as possible but in this case, it didn't happen and therefor meaning that the sessions felt rushed. Teachers at the primary school would not open the safeguard gate for us upon our arrival on serval occasi...
