Author: drnicko

Awarded an MBE for services to arts-based businesses, I am passionate about generating inspiring, socially engaging, creative practice within educational contexts both nationally and internationally.

What constitutes an Olympian Educator?

In June 2012, we’ll be celebrating the concept of the ‘Olympian Educator’ with educators from across the world in a unique conference on London’s South Bank. As well as meeting diverse speakers and colleagues and sharing pedagogies, ideas and approaches from across the world, delegates will be able to visit London schools and meet – through the magic of the internet and the performing arts – ancient educators such as Socrates, Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky and Montessori.

But by Olympian, we don’t just mean schools with the highest visibility or schools with the highest performing pupils – but schools in which the efforts, talents and skills of the staff are making a real –Olympic – difference to local children’s and families lives.

So, to get the ball rolling, we’d like to know: what does being an Olympic Educator mean to you? Is it something in their training? Their performance? Their relationships with their students? Their pedagogy? The Olympic Educators Conference has kicked off now and will be a further 4 months in the making.

For further information or for the chance to be involved please see

https://drnicko.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=735&action=edit

or contact me at nowen.aspire@btconnect.com

5 Stanislavskian tips for teachers: role play made easy

1. Characters have objectives. This is expressed through the use of an active and transitive verb eg kick off gracefully.

2. Superobjectives  link objectives through a line of action.’ eg kick off gracefully then retire to the bar to recuperate.

3. In analyzing an action, the actor answers three questions, ‘What do I (the character) do?’ ‘Why do I (the character) do it?’ and ‘How do I (the character) do it?’ eg what on earth possessed me to kick off, go to the bar and then end up having a full day of assessment?

4. Truth on stage is different from truth in real life. Just because you are acting a full day of assessment in role, does not mean that is what you are actually doing.

5. The aim of the actor should be to use his technique to turn the play into a theatrical reality. In this process imagination plays by far the greatest part. So, an act of assessment would be much better accompanied by acts of fanciful daydreamings. E,g this school should be closed down… But would be so much more effective if it was placed on the top of a mountain.

The Tuesday Rant: how the arts sector is being shafted by parts of the public sector who should know better.

Dear local authority,

It has come to our attention that you are increasingly awarding tenders for arts projects to universities whose turnover is a zillion times higher than the value of that tender.

Do you not realise that you are undermining the sector you claim to represent?

Dear university, why do you insist on putting students on public projects which effectively takes the bread out of local artists mouths? Do you not realise you are shooting the local arts economy in the head every time you place an unqualified graduate into an arts project?  Would you accept student doctors diagnosing your children’s health if they’d done just one year in medical school?

Dear local authority, why are you complicit with this act under the guise of getting ‘value of for money?’ Old mill owners got value for money by exploiting their workers to within an inch of their lives.  Why are you contributing to this outdated industrial practice? And more importantly, why are you allowed to keep getting away with it?

Maybe you’ll appreciate our case once all your arts workers have lost their jobs because of your funding cuts and come back to the sector to look for work… Only to find there is a skeleton of a sector left because it’s been shafted by universities who place unqualified students on projects which should be run by qualified local professionals. And offer access to their so called ‘premium spaces’ in order to claw back some of the massive capital deficit they’ve built up in ‘investing’ in the local economy. 

Dear local authority, dear university, please don’t coming looking to the sector to dig you out of a cultural desert in a few years time. The responsibility for that emptiness will be yours and the students who have long flown the city.

The Tuesday Rant: write an Open Letter to a famous person!

The Tuesday Rant is an occasional series of irritated and indignant responses to various public figures, some famous, some infamous, others aspiring to be either one of the other.

The Open Letter format allows you for the possibility that your target might even care just a little bit about what you think about them, their practice, their pet dog or bar-room habits. Certainly enough to bother to read beyond the first couple of lines.

If you have any Open Letter you would like to share, then please feel free to add to the comments below. You never know what might happen next.

More Open Letters here.

Removing the Rat Runs: call for European Partners

New adult learning programme for 2012: Removing the Rat Runs

We frequently use arts and creative practice in the development of innovative community engagement strategies and work directly with local communities to generate new local policies in the field of health, environment, education and culture. In 2012 we will be focusing on the health and environmental effects of urban traffic and will be doing this through the delivery of our adult learning programme, Removing the Rat Runs.

Removing the Rat Runs: calming local traffic through community actions

The ‘Rat Run’ project aims to increase local communities knowledge, skills and capabilities to reduce road traffic accidents in neighbourhoods and residential areas. Success of the speed reduction programmes in Liverpool UK, for example, has been proven to depend on good communications and building grass roots support and demand for reduced speed. It is the culture shift which ensures successful outcomes on traffic calming and road traffic accidents.
Grundtivg partners on the project will be involved in developing a European project which provides innovative insights and advice on best practice on establishing community based models of traffic calming.
Learners from the Grundtvig partners will be involved in designing local, national and European models of traffic calming based on the following model:

1. Devising a communications plan and overseeing an approach which will include
a. Identification of key stakeholders, interest groups etc and proposals for their engagement and recruitment to the campaign.
b. Utilise appropriate research to develop and co-ordinate a campaign across grassroots and influencers to achieve successful speed reduction
c. Develop key messages based on insight into attitudes, behaviours, motivations and barriers, and co-ordinate use across all partners for engagement and formal consultations to support consistency, using research to support targeting /effectiveness.
d. Develop communications protocol to ensure effective partnership approach
e. Develop supporting branding for partners to use
f. Develop a media relations strategy and action plan that will educate journalists, garner support for the agenda and result in positive media coverage.
g. Support community delivery partner / groups to run effective supporting campaigns – building community ownership and capacity
h. Evaluate the approach during delivery and refine approach in response to feedback

2. Identify community partners / organisations and individuals interested in championing this issue and taking the message into their own communities…eg schools campaigns, Councillors, parent led road safety campaigns, youth associations etc..
3. Ensure appropriate and effective reach of engagement with communities.
4. Facilitate with training, skills, financial and other resources, community led activities and campaigns to build support for the process and shift attitudes.
5. Integrate community activity with implementation phasing and partner agency communications to ensure an effective city wide approach.
6. Develop responsive and pro-active approach to engaging widely and building community capacity using social networking as one approach.

Do you want to be a Grundtvig partner?

We are now seeking European partners who would wish to collaborate on this project through a Grundtvig Partnership scheme. We are particularly looking for partners who:

* Regularly run innovative, creative adult learning programmes especially for disaffected and socially excluded adults

* Have experience of working within Grundtvig, Comenius or Leonardo European funding schemes

* Can bring a portfolio of teaching and learning expertise to the project including technical skills such as website design, production of learning materials

If you would like to become a Grundtvig partner please contact me at:

Aspire Trust Ltd
Valkyrie Lodge
30 Valkyrie Road
Wallasey CH45 4RJ

Tel. + 44 (0) 151639 9231
Mob + 44 (0) 77422 71570
Email nowen.aspire@btconnect.com
Skype name richardnyowen

So you wanna be a partner? Presentation to the Creative Connections in the Early Years Tasmania teams

Urban regeneration partnership initiatives – in which public, private and the voluntary sector collaborate in order to bring about the management of public services within neighbourhoods – have been a feature of the UK’s political landscape since the Thatcher government of the 1980s.

In 1999, the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE) were commissioned jointly by the British government departments of culture (the DCMS) and education (the DfEE) to review  the place of the arts and creativity in the curriculum.

They went on to publish  All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education in 1999 which in turn led to the launch of the Creative Partnerships (CP) initiative: a programme of creativity and cultural education in 16 areas across England in 2001. Their aims were to provide school children with the opportunity to develop creativity in learning and to take part in cultural activities of the highest quality….  and provide ‘a powerful, focused, high profile and inspirational tool for change, genuinely capturing the imagination of children, parents and carers, teachers and communities.

Whilst CP came to an end earlier this year, its ethos of partnership working has been extended across many public sector organisations who have developed many different kinds of cultural initiatives from music education to cultural leadership to creative learning.  Increasingly, these public sector organisations have identified themselves not only as funders but as partners too.

The impact of new forms of cultural partnership on the Early Years settings

This presentation will critically review within an Early Years context what this new form of cultural partnership has entailed and how it is played out in the classroom, the school, between organsiations and at a macro, policy level too.  It ask questions such as:

• What is meant by partnership – by whom, when and in what context?
• How is partnership is manifested at operational and strategic levels?
• What might be principles of cultural partnership?
• How have these principles been implemented in the Early Years classroom?
• What factors prevent the development of a healthy cultural partnership?

Case studies involving the engagement of artists in early years contexts; cross-organisational planning and delivery; and how national policy impacts on practitioners at a local level will be discussed.

Learnings from on-line dating sites and lonely hearts club adverts will also be taken into account!

Download the presentation here:

http://db.tt/sFJrxJGC

He’s Behind You! The guide to writing the AspireTwitterPanto – 51 days to go!

Now with 11 characters, 5 named contributors and some intriguing character dynamics shaping up, HE’S BEHIND YOU! Is now up and running.

You can contribute here:

https://drnicko.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/hes-behind-you-the-aspire-christmas-panto/

The first week of the project involves the creation of characters, the Panto world and some initial thoughts on potential songs.

The second week will start generating monologues, dialogues and other Panto-type communications. So if you fancy contributing to what characters say and do, now’s the time to start contributing.

We look forward to hearing from you!

He’s Behind You! – the script scrapbook of the AspireTwitterPanto

Here’s the place to add monologue, dialogue, songs and other utterances between the characters of the He’s Behind You Aspire Twitter Panto!

Please note you can only add script belonging to characters who have been identitified in the project ‘bible’ found here:

https://drnicko.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/hes-behind-you-the-aspire-christmas-panto/

Once upon a time there was a very kind, considerate and generous Banker called Heinous. This may come as a surprise dear viewer, but there was a time when bankers were the pillars of society, when to be a banker was to be a sign of civility and nobility, when everyone loved a local banker and when the most honourable thing one could aspire to was a career in banking. Yes, strange, but true, and our heroine, Heinous, was a banker set in that tradition. She was brave, she was fearless, she was beautiful. Quite simply, she was a banker.

Opening Number: PIGGIES MAKE THE WORLD GO ROUND
(thanks to Cabaret)

Piggies make the world go around
…the world go around
…the world go around.
Piggies makes the world go around
They make the world go ’round.

A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound
…a buck or a pound
…a buck or a pound.
Is all that makes the world go around
That clinking, clanking sound…
Can make the world go ’round

Piggy piggy piggy piggy
Piggy piggy piggy piggy
Piggy piggy piggy

If you happen to rich
And you feel like a night’s entertainment
You can pay for a gay escapade.
If you happen to be rich and alone
And you need a companion
You can ring (ting-a-ling) for the maid.
If you happen to be rich
And you find you are left by your lover,
And you moan and you groan quite a lot
You can take it on the chin,
Call a cab and begin to recover
On your 14-karat yacht! WHAT!?

Piggies make the world go around
…the world go around
…the world go around.
Piggies make the world go aroung
Of that we both are sure…
*rasberry sound* on being poor!

Piggy piggy piggy piggy
Piggy piggy piggy piggy
Piggy piggy piggy

When you haven’t any coal in the stove
And you freeze in the winter
And you curse to the wind at your fate.
When you haven’t any shoes on your feet,
Your coat’s thin as paper,
And you look 30 pounds underweight
When you go to get a word of advice
From the fat little pastor,
He will tell you to love evermore.
But when hunger comes to rap,
rat-a-tat rat-a-tat at the window
*knock knock* (at the window)
Who’s there? (hunger) oh, hunger!!
See how love flies out the door…

For, piggies make the world go around
…the world go around
…the world go around.
Piggies make the world go ’round
The clinking, clanking sound of…
Piggy piggy piggy piggy
Piggy piggy piggy piggy
Get a little, get a little
Piggy piggy piggy piggy
Mark, a yen, a buck or a pound,
That clinking, clanking, clunking sound,
Is all that makes the world go ’round,
It makes the world go ’round!

NOTHING BUT A FAILURE!
Enter Flash Buttons, at the depths of despair, no money, cut off from his inheritance but still harbouring dreams of his career as a racing driver. Emerging from the shadows are Failure and Greed, surrounded by a group of slinky slimy people dancing, known as the ‘Cronies’
Failure and Greed sing to Flash Buttons with the Cronies dancing all around Flash Buttons

Who are you? (REPEAT UNDERNEATH)

Failure, failure, nothing but a failure
Failure, failure, nothing but a failure

Those nagging doubts that you have in your mind
All of those people who haven’t got time
All of your problems you long to beat
All those emotions belong to me

You know that I know that you know I’m right
You know that I know that you know I’m right
Here in front of you
Blocking your way
Here in front of you
Everyday
Here in front of you
Here to stay
In front of you

Who are you? (REPEAT UNDERNEATH)

Failure, failure, nothing but a failure
Failure , failure, nothing but a failure

People pick fault in your every word
Moves that you make, all your fears, you’re scared
You can’t succeed, it’s so plain to see
All of your doubts – belong to me

You know that I know that you know I’m right
You know that I know that you know I’m right
Here in front of you
Blocking your way
Here in front of you
Everyday
Here in front of you
Here to stay
In front of you

Who are you? (X 6)

Failure, failure, nothing but a failure
Failure, failure, nothing but a failure

(for the tune visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BKg0z2zmUs )

A (FAMOUS) SONG ABOUT BANKERS AND CARS

On the corner is a banker with a motorcar
The little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mac
In the pouring rain…
Very strange
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes . .

WHAT ALL GOOD PANTOS HAVE
‘what did you see?
‘a ghost’
‘a ghost?’
‘you didn’t’
‘i did’ ‘well we better sing it again then’