Open Bridges includes a series of workshops hosted by Lou Duffy-Howard with creative writers Christina Lewis and Russ Litten who are working with schools, prisons and community venues to explore freedom and the impact of freedoms denied in the world today.
Pearson Primary School was the destination for our first Open Bridges workshop. Creative writer Christina Lewis and I spent the morning with Miss Northen’s year 6 class and explored the concept of freedom and what it means to different people. We played some games – You have to taste it! and Free as a bird.
Year 6 is a brilliant class and we were very impressed how everyone worked together, really thinking about what they were doing, helping each other out, showing lots of different strengths and skills – and super teamwork.
Thanks to our workshop photographer Piotr Korczynski who took these photographs of the session. Click on an image to enlarge the photo and scroll through…
Open Bridges started when we were thinking about freedom – what it means to different people and the impact of freedom denied to so many people in the world today. We started to explore the concept that the only way to truly understand something is to experience it.
The children told us about Children’s Rights, famous people from Hull – William Wilberforce amongst them – and drew some fabulous pictures showing what Freedom means to them. The class did a dance performance for us – great fun – and everyone wrote a piece describing the feeling of freedom that dancing, singing, and sport makes them feel.
Here is the work year six produced at the workshop. Click on an image to see the full picture and scroll through…
Thank you to Miss Northen and the class – Areefah, Paige, Illyas, Fatimah, Chadri, Paul, Harvey, Jay, Hibah, Dillon, Edward, Weronika, Kieran, Kira, Regan, Christabel, Evan and Elan – for welcoming us to join in for the morning. Pearson Primary School in Hull is a lovely school and Miss Northen’s class is fantastic.
Lou Duffy-Howard
“Thank you again for a wonderful morning together. I always find your workshops thought provoking, inspiring and engaging for all our learners. I feel in the future I would really like to do more work around emotional ‘tool kit’ and what you do in life when things aren’t ok. As our children are all taught to read, write and maths which is incredibly important, I feel they are missing the emotional tools. I try to prepare them as well -rounded, confident, resilient young people but they need more and your workshops really tap into this idea. Any future projects I would love to hear about and be part of. Good luck for ‘Open Bridges’ and I’ll be on watch for anything else you are doing.Thank you again,Lucy Northen”.
Open Bridges is an independent Hull based project by Duffy-Howard Music in partnership with HCC Streetscene Services taking place during the City of Culture Freedom Season.