Posted By: Richard White, 11 October 2010
And so it’s over to me, Richard White (Marketing & Resources Assistant, Writers’ Centre Norwich), to give you the rundown on yesterday’s launch of Well Versed at the The Future Zone space in City Academy Norwich.
Oh my, Andrew (see previous WCN post) wasn’t kidding about the ‘well-equipped IT room’. An entourage of WCN staff, the Chief Exec of Norwich City Council, Laura McGillivray, and Norwich South MP, Simon Wright (to name but a few) entered a hive of technological poetry activity, and we were lucky to have hoards of enthusiastic children to show us how it all worked.
From touch-screen poetry Block Busters (I’ll have a P for poetry please, Bob!) to a film booth that encourages you to respond to what you see and hear. I stepped out of the booth rather pleased with my contribution until I was told that we were being filmed in there – hopefully it won’t come back to haunt me...
I’m pleased to report that the children were happy to partake in traditional forms of poetry making as well: an assortment of musical sounds responding to lines of poetry; a group of pupils gathered evidence from various objects to create a poetic picture of a mysterious missing character, and we were all encouraged to contribute to a wall of words responding to ‘what poetry means to you’ - all fantastic examples of how poetry can be taught in schools.
WCN Chief Exec, Chris Gribble, outlined what was to come from the Well Versed pilot in Norfolk; a year long partnership between teachers, writers and up to 20 schools that will develop new ways of teaching poetry and performance.
Chris then introduced our guest poets, Martin Figura and Helen Ivory, both of whom will be working with teachers throughout the pilot. They read from their work and gave us a taste of what they had to offer; expertise and poetic style easily come to mind!
Finally, we were treated to three poems by three very talented students. They created the work through another of our projects named Strangers and Canaries (part of our City of Refuge programme), and hearing them read provided a clear insight of how valuable good poetry teaching can be – they were brave, clear and inspired readings.
This is just the start. Throughout the year we’ll develop poetry courses for trainee teachers; trial innovative approaches to using poetry across the curriculum; work with a diverse group of emerging and established poets and boost teacher confidence. Keep popping back to this blog and we’ll keep you updated.
Now, about that film footage...
