Spoken Word and Performance workshop with a Shaddock surprise!

Yesterday spent another amazingly inspirational, productive and fun day facilitating an incredibly talented group of Newcastle University Fine Art students on a Spoken Word and Performance workshop.

The students range from 1st - 4th year undergraduates, and are really supportive of each other and engaged in what everyone is doing. Over the course of the day we thoroughly examined everyone's text and thought of numerous possibilities of presenting and delivering the work. The progress made has been significant.

Next Friday is the final session and I look forward to experiencing how their work has further developed between now and then.

I regard my role as a facilitator and am keen to eliminate any hierarchy between them and me. We all learn together and share experience and ideas. I find this fosters a really productive and experimental environment where people are happy to contribute.The students seem to enjoy it too.

At one point in the workshop I mentioned a work that I made involving a shaddock (a fruit).

(When I was a child my Grandad told me that our surname, Shaddock, is a fruit. Years later when I was living in Glasgow, I decided to go on a 'quest to find a shaddock'. I went to my closest greengrocer and asked for a shaddock, only to find they had never heard of one! I asked them to suggest where they thought I would be able to source one, and I followed their instructions and asked there. This process continued until I eventually located a shaddock. The shaddock was discovered by Captain Shaddock who traveled to the Carribean, and brought the fruit back to the UK where he named it. 

Shortly after my discovery, I was involved in a group exhibition, so my contribution was shaddock canapes and shaddock cocktails. 

I later took the shaddock to the Barras market, a traditional market renowned for bartering, in the East End of Glasgow. I had a shaddock stall whereby I offered shaddock produce along with a story about the shaddock in return for a story. Initially people were suspicious of me handing out free produce, but as word spread around the market about what I was doing, this quickly turned into curiosity and I had lots of people really eager to share their stories with me. It was a super way to be educated into the local dialect!)

See some documentation of this on my website

http://www.helenshaddock.co.uk/my-quest-to-find-a-shaddock.html

After lunch the students surprised me as they had been to a local greengrocer and bought a shaddock for us to share! It made a delicious afternoon snack.

Great work today folks!

Spoken word and performance workshop at Newcastle University

Over the past couple of days I have been facilitating a Spoken Word and Performance workshop with students at Newcastle University who have an interest in transforming written text based work into spoken word performance. The workshop will continue next Friday and will result in a small group exhibition of work made by the students during the 3-day workshop. 

I developed the workshop having returned from the Spoken Word Residency at Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada last year, and use the workshop as an opportunity to share some of the techniques, skills and tips learned while on the residency.


Following the success of the workshop last year and the demand from students, Newcastle University invited me back to work with a different group of students.


During the session yesterday I showed the group some examples of artists that use spoken word / text / performance. As I was compiling the list to share with them I thought it would be useful to share it more widely, so here are the links to some works that I mentioned. Please be aware that this list is only mean to be a taster and in no way does it cover all artists working in these ways. It is simply a starting point!


ZENSHIP - Mundo Gumbo - Tanya Evanson


This is an example of how a live band can be used in spoken word performance.


https://youtu.be/r3bnV2vG5Rk



Afua Cooper at VERSEfest


This demonstrates that a convincing performance can be given even if the performer is using written notes.


https://youtu.be/pgo-nedZnwM



Martin Creed - Words and Music


This is an example of the combination of words, music, visuals (on the screen behind) and how the means of delivery can echo the content of the work.


https://youtu.be/WKFM1nl7_Y0




Blonk performs Ursonate with real-time typography


This is an example of how subtitles can add to a work.




https://youtu.be/rs0yapSIRmM




Samuel Beckett - Not I

This is an example of how spoken word can exist in a video and how cropping of an image alters the reading of the work.

https://youtu.be/l8C4HL2LyWU