Persons with disability and art

Persons with disability and art

S.O.S

Steve, Ally and Fran,

I've been trying to e-mail you guys for the past 4 days, but the mails can't be delivered to your adress. Are you guys having e-mail problems?

Leen@ccleopoldsburg

Videos from Belgium

Hi everyone!


Our camera-guy Jeroen has made some short montages with the Belgian footage. Most of the footage is from the Belgian festival, but there's also a short piece about the Malta & UK festival.

You can find all the clips at: http://www.jeroenpeys.be/TRANSFER/OPENINGDOORS


Have fun!

team Belgium

let's open those doors!

memories....and building blocks for our future!

Maltese warm and sunny greetings

Hi everyone!

Since our return from Belgium, we have had a chance to share our experience with the rest of the group, see the photos together and begin to plan for our future!! All are hoping to be able to travel again to have the chance of visiting both England and Belgium. During today's session we spent some time to write you all messages as we all think very fondly of our time in Leopoldsburg and Newcastle. Thank you all for being such great hosts. Here are our messages:

From the group who went to Belgium:
From Andrew:
Hi,

I wish to watch the Belgian performance again. I wish to come to Belgium again to have fun. I mostly wish to see Wim again because he is a good man. I mostly enjoyed bowling and that I went to the city to buy chocolate.
Thanks and good wishes
Andrew


From Jason:
I love Mariano and I wish to come to Belgium again Mariano. We all had good performances.


From Priscilla:
I wish to go to Belgium again because I love you. I felt good when I played the part of the wind and the fairy.

From Joseph:
I enjoyed it because I saw much green and trees. I enjoyed eating.

From Isabel:
Hello Mariano and An,
How are you?
I like the Belgian performance and the others. I liked the Belgian performance most because in it there were some cushions and the cushions were organised.
Wim,
I like Belgian fries and Belgian sausage. I miss you.. I like chocolate pudding and rice pudding. I like Belgian food because it is different from Malta.
Mariano, I miss you, I love you.
An, I miss you and I like Belgium very much.
love from
Isabel.

From Sean:
Hi all the Belgian team. I'm Sean and I want to tell you that I had much fun in those 4 days even though the first day was only travelling. I enjoyed the city of Mol and the other places where we went. And although we were travelling, I saw much countryside and rivers and I enjoyed the atomium, and the square of Brussels, and the mannequin pis and the closed market. I hope to come again and visit other places like Bruges and Antwerp.
The performance of England was very good. I enjoyed it very much.
from Sean

From Alison:
I enjoyed it. I played the mermaid well. The performance of the English was good.

From the group who went to England:
From Caroline:
I remember the Chinese noodles and the street party in England. Bye Steve and the entire team.

From Laura:
Chris, I missed you. I wish to go abroad again. I enjoyed it very much. I wish to come again.

From Alison:
David, send me a message when you want. I wish to see you again sweet one. I liked your performance a lot. I love you David. God willing you will come to Malta. If you come I wish to see you.

From David:
On Wednesday we did the performance and we ate Chinese noodles. On Thursday we went on the tour and did the performance. On Friday we went to London to go to the airport and back to Malta.

That's all folks! we'll be in touch soon again we hope and we look forward to all of your news.

Hi everyone!

The Belgian participants all enjoyed the Belgium Opening Doors Festival. So they're all very excited to tell you about their experiences. No time to waste, here are the reactions from the Belgian participants:


I loved it that you were in Belgium! I really hope to see you all again as real artists!
Marleen


Hi everyone from Malta
I loved it very much that you were in Belgium. We had a lot of fun with you. I thought your play from Malta was very beautiful. I was very glad to see you all again. You are very nice people who have a lot of fun with us.

Hi everyone from England
You were always bright and happy. I was so happy that you came from England to see us again. Your play was also very nice and I had a lot of fun on the little train.

kind regards,
An from Belgium


Hi Isabel,
I'm so happy that I saw you again. I hope we'll never forget eachother and that maybe I can see you again one time. These 3 days we did some lovely things together, like sitting on the train trough Leopoldsburg.
I hope that you enjoyed being with us.

Love,
Mariano


Dear people from Malta & England,
It was great to have you over here in Leopoldsburg.
I got to know a lot of nice people.
Bowling together was lots of fun and so was the little train ride.
The workshops to get to know eachother were also very nice.
Kris from England, I'm happy to have met you. You made funny jokes at the airport.
Also greetings to Ally, thanks for comforting me.
And lots of greets to Paula. It was great meeting you! You became a good friend of mine. Thanks for your comfort at the airport.
And also kind regards to Steve and the rest!

Annick


A very big hi to everyone, especially "the Kris"!
Jean-Marie the bus driver


I loved the play about the sea. They danced very nice and the mermaid was beautiful!
I had a lot of fun posing for the picture on the stage with everyone together.

Best Wishes,
Jessica


Hi everyone from England and Malta. Both of you played very good! The English were very funny, especially when Steve fell.
It was so nice that both the Maltese and the English were visiting us and that we know them all very good now.
It was also a lot of fun to participate in the workshops from Steve and Louise.

Ibrahim


Hi Ann from Malta,
The whole group from Malta was very sweet, especially Ann. They danced with us at the party. I had a good time at the "frietkot" and in Brussels. It was fun to eat and drink.
I miss you, Ann.
The group from Malta and sweet Ann, thank you!

Love,
Dirk
miss you...


I really enjoyed you guys being here.
I had a great time in Brussels.
Steve is funny.

Wim


I loved your visit to Belgium.
lots of greetings
Ivo


Steve, I think you're a little rascal. :-)
We'll miss every one of you!
I liked it that you were here.
I don't really know what else to say, so I drew a big heart.

Love,

Johnny

It was great to see you again. I still often think about the time when we visited Malta.
Kristof


Malta, your play was very beautiful!
Your dancing was so nice, you did a very good job!
Christel


The English were so funny! Especially in the beginning!
Steve makes me laugh!
See ya!
Tessa


We miss you!
We all enjoyed it.
I had a good time!
We had lots of fun.

lots of love,
Shana


Dear Sara,

When will I see you again? Because I really miss you!
You were my friend!
You did a very good job on stage, I loved it!
When are you going to write me a letter?

Regards,
Christine


My stay in England was super!
I'm glad that I got the opportunity to play there!
I was so happy to see you again, I will never forget that.

David


We loved the trip to Brussels, especially Manneke & Jeanneke Pis.
Our time in Malta was too short, everyone was so nice to us!
Last week it was great to meet everyone again.
We wish we'll see you all again one day.

Frieda & Marcel


LOTS OF LOVE FROM BELGIUM!

Malta prepares for Belgium

Hello all of you fellow door openers!

The Malta team is in full blast preparation for the Belgium trip in 2 weeks time. The group travelling is really excited about this new journey, and those participants who travelled to England and who will therefore not be joining us to Belgium are being very supportive and sharing in the excitement.

We had some extra sessions this fortnight to really increase the input to the work and this morning we finalised the narrative structure and the mime that will 'tell' the story. It is a magical journey with many twists, surprises and emotions. You will also recognise some elements from our starting point! THE BAG! We are very much looking forward to sharing this with you all and to experiencing your work in workshops and in performance.

see you all soon!
Maltesers

Opening doors at Headway's 'Come On Down' Festival UK

Hello Friends & Happy New Year!

Firstly let me thank 'Team Malta' for our amazing trip there. We will all remember it for the rest of our lives. It was great to see our group experience travelling and soaking up the sunny experiences of Malta and the grand atomosphere of Valetta of an evening. Some had never flown before or been away anywhere for that long, nor stayed anywhere so lovely. The festival itself was wonderful, St James is a beautiful venue echoing with culture and history and we felt priviledged to appear there in the lovley millenium theatre auditorium.

Back here at Headway HQ we are only just recovering from a very busy few weeks hard work with Christmas projects and shows. It was absolutely fabulous to see everyone at our 'Come On Down Festival' in December. We run this festival every year, the groups who perform are all groups who Headway work with regularly and this year it had an exciting extra dimention with our visitors from Malta and Belgium. All were delighted & surprised to meet 'the europeans'. 'The Seven Stars Northumberland's Learning Disabled Theatre Co' supported by Headway, were finally to meet the mysterious guests everyone had been talking about for months!

The festival audience loved the Opening Doors Groups performances. Language was never a barrier (although this is mainly due to the excellent English spoken by our partners - we have been trying to learn a bit of each others languages - I promise!).

I could really see that the Opening Doors Groups had made loads of progress with their performance work. The acting and the devised stories were very good with lots of energy and enjoyment coming from the actors. Congratulations everyone!!

All looked very confident and comfortable on stage - particularly when you remember that people had done little or no drama work before this project - wonderful progress and rewarding to see. When I look back at how far the project has come since the seed of the idea was formed by Fran, Toni, Roger & myself (Allie) at the Grudvig Seminar about 3 years ago in Malta - I think it truely has 'Opened Doors' for everyone involved.

I think we are all learning a great deal from everyone who has jumped on board for this unknown journey and having a fantastic time along the way. We are learning amazing ways to work together whilst learning to understanding each others cultural differences and ways of being. We have also learned how deep down we are really all the same too.

Next Stop Belgium!

I'm really looking forward to the next festival in Belgium and I know that the rest of TEAM UK are really excited too!

Here is yet another language for you all - 'Geordie' (Geordies are the local people of Newcastle) 'Gan Canny' (or 'take it easy' in English). See you in Leopoldsburg!


Allie

AlisonWalton-Robson
Creative Director

Headway
Arts*People*Inclusion
HeadwayT@aol.com

Happy New Year from Team Belgium!

Hi everybody!

A happy new year from Belgium ! After our wonderful England trip we are looking forward to seeing all of you again in April at the festival here in Leopoldsburg. Before the holidays we showed the photos and shared the stories of our time in Newcastle and Blyth to the parents and the rest of the group. We even toasted with a glass of champagne to our success as actors in the Seven Stars festival. At our first meeting of 2009 last week we listened to a sound clip that was broadcasted on the local radio here at the day we left for England . Anniek was interviewed by a journalist and she did a great job talking about the purposes of our trip and the Opening Doors project. We hope to put some of the many photos we made online soon. And thanks again for Seven Stars for that four days in December we will never forget!

the England travellers
Marcel, Ibrahim, Dirk, Anniek, Frida, David, Tessa, Johnny, Christel, Tanja, Anny, Wim & Peter

EU project opens doors for theatre performers

EU project opens doors for theatre performers