Timisien Outreach Project

I was invited to work on an outreach project by Mansfield Cultural Services at Yeoman Park Academy in Mansfield. Architects of Air's inflatable structure, Timisien, was due to arrive in Mansfield during the 2024 Spring Holidays: - https://www.mansfield.gov.uk/Luminarium

Yeoman Park Academy is a specialist academy for children with severe, complex, profound and multiple learning difficulties. The aim of the project was to help the students to access Timisien by introducing it within the safe setting of their school environment.

Architects of Air sent me images and audio from inside Timisien and we projected them into the dance spaces. The students were invited to be in the space, either in their whole class group, smaller class groups or 1:1 with just myself dancing and trusted staff present. Whilst in the space the students were free to respond to the images and the sound in any safe way that arose for them. Myself and the staff in the room supported their responses by shadowing, mirroring, following, underlining, returning and following the students. We drew on aspects of intensive interaction, instantaneous choreography and authentic movement techniques.

It was a beautiful and magical experience.

We are currently planning a follow up project where we film the students' sessions from one week, then play the film from that week on the projections the week after, and film the session that week. We will repeat for a number of weeks so we have layers of their own responses in the same physical space and developing temporal space.