Tara Arts 2011 - SAILING TO BRITAIN @ the NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM

We are delighted to announce Tara Arts' Sailing to Britain performance will reach its final destination on Friday 28 October at 3pm at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Uncover the lives of Lascars, migrant sailors who were shipped to Britain from Africa and Asia by the East India Company. This dynamic performance by young people aged 14-22 who took part in Tara Arts' Sailing to Britain project over the past 3 years. Directed by Jules Tipton, Participation Officer Sarah Clews.

Location: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (Lecture Theatre)

Free tickets will be available from the National Museum ticket desk

Suitable for ages 7+

email: admin@tara-arts.com for more

or call Tara Arts on 020 8333 4457

Sailing to Britain - the final journey, October 2011

In half-term from 24th to 29th October Tara Arts' young participants will stage the final performance of SAILING TO BRITAIN. The venue is as yet to be confirmed. Watch this space.

Call Tara Arts on 020 8333 4457

or email: admin@tara-arts.com

From our project partner on Sailing to Britain, the National Maritime Museum.... A fantastic opportunity

Youth Advisors Wanted!

The National Maritime Museum's Youth Advisory Group is having a Recruitment Day on Saturday 26 February for you to have a go, find out more and have fun. The Group is open for 13-21 year olds to make the Museum relevant for young people through consultation and creating events. If you want to get involved, get in touch with Shauna at SAO'Brien@nmm.ac.uk

And here are links to the video:

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/about/youth/youth-advisory-group/ - this links to our page with lots more info!

http://vimeo.com/18477245 - Vimeo film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5DjPXhd6MA - YouTube film

The National Maritime Museum are currently recruiting for Youth Advisors to join the Youth Advisory Group (YAG). The Group is open for 13-21 year olds to meet once a month to make the Museum relevant for young people. We have a Recruitment Day coming up on Saturday 26 February, 12-14:30 here at the Museum. The day is free and will be a fun opportunity to have a go and find out more. This can be booked by emailing me directly and I will add young people's contacts to a list.

What is YAG?

The YAG is open for 13-21 year olds who want to make the Museum relevant to young people through organising events and workshops, acting as Museum consultants, going behind the scenes to explore the Museum and sharing their ideas with others. The YAG is a great opportunity for young people to get involved in their local community, learn new skills in a professional setting, build their confidence by taking part and having a voice and be creative.

Who are the youth advisors?

At present, our Youth Advisors are from all different backgrounds and with interests in history, politics, science, finance, sports and geology. We welcome any young people that want to add something new and different to their record of achievement and CV.

What opportunities are available?

Now is an exciting time to get involved here at the National Maritime Museum (which encompasses Royal Observatory Greenwich and the Queen’s House in addition to National Maritime Museum). We are in the process of building a new wing, with new archives and galleries to advise on. The YAG is making a difference to the Museum today and also the way it will be experienced in the future.

How much commitment is required?

The YAG meets informally once a month outside of school hours, with opportunities to take on more responsibilities during school holidays to gain extra experiences.

London 2012 presentation on SAILING TO BRITAIN

Notes from Helen Renwick (Arts Manager) Wandsworth Borough Council and Jonathan Kennedy (Executive Director) TARA Arts presentation for the London Culture 2012 conference, 8th December 2010, at the Lost Theatre.

Wandsworth Borough Council & TARA ARTS working toward London 2012.

Wandsworth: Our Planning

GLOBAL Opening Ceremony & Games
NATIONAL Torch Relay
REGIONAL Cultural Festival

LOCAL Cultural Celebrations

Identify relevant opportunities to present work

Maximise existing events: eg WANDSWORTH ARTS FESTIVAL and TARA ARTS' SAILING TO BRITAIN.

TARA ARTS - SAILING TO BRITAIN

The project, from inception through to outputs

THE IDEA:

Lascars = sailors from Asia and Africa used extensively on British ships. Many eventually settled in London. A fabulous metaphor for creating a new society and nations converging in London, Olympics theme.

THE PAST 18 MONTHS:

Secured partners – National Maritime Museum, Greenwich Theatre, Croydon Clocktower & Wandsworth Arts and Education services.

Secured funding – London Councils, HLF and Wandsworth

Recruited the project team and participants.

Researched stories and developed the performance methodology – including oral history interviews, archive visits inc Old Bailey & maritime object handling sessions.

Presented performances – Greenwich, Croydon & Wandsworth

Marketing strategies that worked for the project

RECRUITMENT

Key role Participation Officer

Direct contact – individuals, community orgs, schools across London and through partners networks.

Focus on summer workshops programme

INSPIRE mark and associated kudos helped leverage HLF funding.

RETENTION

Over the past 18 months into the project over 523 participants, 60% BME

Strong sense of ownership of the Lascar stories by the young participants

Dynamic and challenging opportunities including curating a Lascar exhibition for the Museum of Croydon, learning aerial performance skills as in the rigging of a Tall Ship, making theatre for performance.

How young people were engaged/involved in the project?

Initial consultation on the idea with TARA ARTS’ youth group

Taster workshops linked to the Story of London Festival & Open Weekend

Participants formed Steering Group

The Research & Development phase including learning theatre and Heritage skills – visiting an archive, interpreting the findings and translating it into making theatre.

Intensive rehearsals with Tara Arts’ project team to transform a disparate group of young people into a capable performance troupe.

TARA ARTS: Sailing to Britain

What we know of the past 18 months and what next as we work toward London 2012.

Vision - A Local Value to London that is Global in its vision, linked the Olympics mission.

Transferable & scalable - and can scale up as our ultimate aim to is stage the show on a boat sailing up the River Thames.

Sustainable & Strategic - major partners notably the National Maritime Museum

Legacy – the partnerships, performance & young participants contribution to uncovering & making public the hidden stories of Lascars.

Wandsworth Council:

This global opportunity has given us local opportunities

Support ongoing and existing work in the borough

Work together to maximise the opportunity that it gives us

National Maritime Museum - project partner on SAILING TO BRITAIN, with TARA Arts, Greenwich Theatre, the Museum of Croydon & Croydon Clocktower

SAILING TO BRITAIN has been a very important project for the museum both in terms of the significance of the maritime historical content, the approach to working with this material and the audience involved. It has been a fantastic experience working with the project team at TARA, their enthusiasm for this history and its importance has inspired and helped us in our own work. The young people involved in the week long project exploring the role of archives and archive material at the museum were amazing. There is so much potential for future partnerhsip work with the museum both through archives, exhibitions and learning - it is hard to know where to begin. It has given real impetus to the will to bring this hidden history into a wider public understanding, to explore our collections further and to demonstrate to the wider Museum that there is public thirst to know more.

We look forward to continuing our partnership on the Sailing to Britain project and collaborating on future off-shoots of this important project.

Andrea Cunningham
Head of Informal Learning and Access
National Maritime Museum
Greenwich, London SE10 9NF

We are grateful to London Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund, Arts Council England & Wandsworth Council for their sustained support of the project.

Sailing to Britain awarded the Inspire mark from LOCOG

We were delighted to be awarded the INSPIRE mark by LOCOG (the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games) for SAILING TO BRITAIN.

A huge thanks from the team at TARA to our partners, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich Theatre, the Museum of Croydon, Croydon Clocktower and the Wandsworth Museum, the SAILING TO BRITAIN team and the fantastic young people from across the whole of London who participated in the project over the past eighteen months.

To date over 300 young people have participated and over 4000 people have attended the exhibition, performances and workshops.

Teachers and students wanting to know more about the project and to run National Curriculum related activities at Key Stage 4 can download the free Education Resource Pack from http://www.tara-arts.com/#/participate

Thanks to our project funders, Arts Council, London Councils, Heritage Lottery Fund and Wandsworth Council.

Hannah Brennan and Jusnara Zaman spent five days learning archiving and exhibition skills in autumn 2009 at the National Maritime Museum at the end of the week they presented a fantastic interactive exhibition including a glimpse a the Death Book and Lascar Death Certificates! The Museum staff, friends, family and the TARA project team where hugely impressed by the girls achievement.

Family Workshops at the Museum of Croydon

As a part of the SAILING TO BRITAIN exhibition at the Museum of Croydon in Croydon Clocktower this summer TARA with the museum team ran a series of workshops for families to animate the exhibition. Working with an artist, children with their parents and guardians created treasures chests and masks inspired by Lascari objects from the exhibition.

Over 121 adults and children participated in the heritage workshops and 2000 visitors experienced the exhibition in May and June 2010.

We are grateful to the Heritage Lottery Find - young roots programme for the support of the heritage work on SAILING TO BRITAIN in 2010.