Barbican Box at HOME ignites and supports creative arts practice in schools and colleges across Greater Manchester through a guided process of making new work. The programme introduces young people to imaginative and adventurous approaches to the arts and enriches the school curriculum by connecting schools to world class arts programmes.
The Box is both a work of art and an education tool in its own right and is a portable box filled with the ‘ingredients’ for making and creating art. It contains stimuli, ideas and provocations designed to give students the opportunity to express their unique voices through the process of creating original work.
How does the project work?
Barbican Box at HOME runs from January – June 2020.
Barbican Box at HOME offers Barbican Box to schools and colleges across Greater Manchester. From gallery to screen to stage, via café bar and bookshop, HOME redefines the idea of an "arts centre". It’s a shared space and a creative space, where what’s new is what matters and what matters is that you’re always made to think, to question and to feel... at home. Whether you want to see work that challenges and astounds, or get closer to directors, writers, filmmakers and artists, or just drink the best coffee in town, we hope you love HOME.
This year we are excited to be working with live art collaborators Hunt & Darton to produce a cross-arts box that draws inspiration from the themes of collaboration, radical thinking, freedom of expression and personal creativity and explores how these can give birth to new genres of art and performance. This exploration of collaborative art will be facilitated through artist-led workshop activities guided by the practice of Hunt & Darton and their award-winning pop-up interactive performance and installation Hunt & Darton Café. Students and teachers will work with Hunt & Darton and other artists mentors to develop creative work which will be showcased at HOME in June 2020. This will take the form of a takeover of Theatre 2. Students’ artwork will be displayed in and around Theatre 2 and a series of pop up performances and dramatic interventions will take place throughout the event.
Given the interdisciplinary nature of live art, secondary schools and teachers are invited to apply to take part under the curriculum areas of Theatre or Visual Arts and will be paired with mentors to support the delivery in their curriculum area. The box will be adaptable to suit the individual areas of the curriculum, but will also encourage teachers to draw inspiration and explore work across the art forms.
All participating schools receive:
- The Barbican Box itself and all the contents in it (some items may be on loan)
- An accompanying teacher pack, plus support throughout the project to deal with queries quickly
- A teacher training session at HOME led by Hunt & Darton and your artist mentor.
- Artist mentor visits to the school to support the creative process, the teacher and students
- A visit to HOME to experience Hunt & Darton’s work.
- The opportunity to share their work at a multi art form showcase event at HOME
