Writing West Park - Case Studies - Everybody Writes - Exploring writing beyond the classroom

Case study: Writing West Park

Context

West Park is Darlington’s first new public park in 100 years and part of a larger community development. Poet Bill Herbert was commissioned by developers to write a ’poetry plan’ for the site. His starting points for the plan were West Park’s industrial history, its global agricultural legacy, its idiosyncratic flora and fauna and the new community. The poet’s words appear on commissioned benches, bridges and sculptures throughout the park, on walls and windows in the hospital and rugby clubs; he has also named the new streets.

Inspired by this relationship between house builder and poet, New Writing North developed a schools-based creative writing project called Writing West Park

Aims & principles

Young people were encouraged to respond creatively to West Park’s ecology, industrial history, the town’s global agricultural legacy, its present and future. It was hoped that engagement in this project would promote a sense of confidence in the children’s own creativity, improve their literacy skills and gain a sense of their integral presence in the local community and environment.

Summary

The project has involved children from five Darlington-based schools working with novelist Kitty Fitzgerald, writers Paul Summers and Ian Dowson, poet Maureen Almond, playwrights Matt Hargrave and Joanna Piesse, radio producer Paul Baldwin, film maker Richard Lawson and musician Simon Derbyshire. Their work went to create a radio play, a poetry anthology, six short films, a permanent text-based public art legacy for the new school and an exhibition, all using the same starting points for their creative work that the poet used.

‘It was like a rainbow shining over me… like magic’ Participant, Mount Pleasant Primary

In Practice

Alderman Leach Primary School

Alderman Leach Primary School was located on the edge of West Park and was being re-built as part of the West Park development. With this in mind, novelist Kitty Fitzgerald worked with the children to uncover stories from the school’s history. They looked at old maps of the site in the school’s archives and advertised in the local paper for ex-pupils’ memories, amassing a body of research from which they created a series of stories.

Outcomes: The work the children created as part of ’Writing West Park’ went on to form part of the ’poetry plan’. Excerpts from the children’s stories now feature on glass panels and windows created by glass artist Bridget Jones, and are located as a permanent legacy in the new school.

’The project with Kitty has led to a big improvement in their literacy skills….it has given the children much more confidence with their writing… as a school we are very pleased with [the children’s] achievements’ Class Teacher, Alderman Leach Primary School

Branksome School

Poet Maureen Almond worked at Branksome School with a group of Year 8 pupils. During her time there, the young people created poems about their homes, their streets and what it was like to live in Darlington. They considered the impact Darlington people had made on industrial development, and they questioned friends and family members about their memories of working at Darchem engineering.

Outcomes: Students wrote ’creation myth’ poems about how they thought Darlington and West Park may have come about, and they developed poems based on the three emblematic creatures identified by Bill Herbert in his poetry plan. In these poems, the children gave voice to the Water Vole, the Dingy Skipper Butterfly and the Little Ringed Plover. During a site visit, the students picked up ’souvenirs’ of leaves, flowers, rocks and feathers, about which they wrote poems.

A selection of the poems was then published in an anthology, of which each participant received a copy.

"I am not given to sentimentality but Friday [the culmination of the project] really was one of the very high points of my career so far, and I would like to thank New Writing North for the project that led to so much good work being done and such a pleasant atmosphere. It really has been refreshing." Teacher, Branksome Comprehensive School

Whinfield Junior School

’Countdown at the West Park Hotel’ was a radio play written by children from Whinfield Junior School, with writers Matt Hargrave and Joanna Piesse.

Outcomes: With a visit to West Park as the starting point, this time-travelling adventure with a plot of dizzying complexity was created by the children using drama games, improvisation and writing exercises. The children’s unselfconscious inventiveness worked very well with the freedom and flexibility of radio. The final radio play was performed by pupils alongside professional actors, and produced at Darlington College.

‘The project was fun, educational and enjoyable….it was a brilliant experience to have been involved with’ Participant

Mount Pleasant Primary School

Writers Paul Summers and Ian Dowson worked with filmmaker Richard Lawson and year six pupils at Mount Pleasant Primary, to create four short poetry films during the course of a term. The children wrote a series of poems with the writers and, although diverse in content, each poem had a strong local connection, drawing on the children’s local knowledge of place and character, myth and folklore.

Outcomes: ’Shivers’ is a horror film based on the local myth of the ’white lady’; lo-fi animation ’Futurama’ is a science-fiction vision of Darlington infested by alien fauna and galactic nerds; ’Copper Rainbow’ is a brutal sketch of a down-and-out existence on the Black Path; and ’Blast to the Past’ is a light-hearted docu-poem of a boy’s journey back to nineteenth century Darlington.
Ian Dowson said: "We helped them to create something out of their own urban myths, their own experience. It made them realise that they can shine when it comes to creative intelligence, as much as anybody else."

The Stephenson Centre at Beaumont Hill School

At Beaumont Hill’s Stephenson Centre for young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties, Paul Summers and Ian Dowson worked with two groups of boys. Each group produced stylistically distinct poetic narratives which they interpreted using film and music. Darlington-based film-maker, Richard Lawson worked with the boys to shoot the films, and sound designer Simon Derbyshire was commissioned to capture the boys narrating their stories and also to score both films.

Outcomes: The first short film, ’Ice Cold’, is a slice of urban reality, as a young boy comes into conflict with his step-dad. The second film, ’Pitch Black’, strays into the realm of the supernatural; a young man’s car breaks down on a country road, and he encounters a stranger who may or may not be some sort of monster.
’It was an exciting opportunity for the students to work with ’real’ poets - the boys really enjoyed it and often ask to watch their films.’ Class Teacher

Partnerships

This project was achieved by New Writing North in partnership with Creative Partnerships Tees Valley, Northern Film and Media, Arts and Business, Bussey and Armstrong Homes and Darlington Borough Council.

http://www.northernmedia.org

http://www.aandb.org.uk

http://www.busseyarmstrong.co.uk

http://www.darlington.gov.uk

http://www.newwritingnorth.com