Mobilise Grimm and Co: Summary

rededlab

Supervised By: Lauren Ash, Sessional Artist for Grimm & Co.

Nestled in Rotherham town centre is a rather special shop. Depending on one’s perspective, it was founded in either 1148 or in February, 2016 – and operates to sell all the supplies needed by magical beings, or to create a context which inspire young people to want to write with pleasure. Grimm and Co now have aspirations to expand, and to create mobile pop-up installations which can be toured around schools, festivals – and anywhere else where a little bit of fantasy might help. This project will support the early development and piloting of this work.

EdLab students will work closely with Lauren Ash, one of the Sessional Artists who work for Grimm and Co, to take inspiration from the Rotherham base to generate ideas for mobile versions, develop and resource them. You will pilot these pop-up activities in local schools and community settings in order to refine and perfect them.

This is an exciting opportunity to work directly with one of the UK’s most inspirational educational social enterprises. In doing so, you will learn more about the magic that can happen when learning is framed in a strong purpose and allowed to develop in unboundaried ways. Grimm’s work makes every child a writer, and releases potential which might otherwise be overlooked.

Farewell, And Thanks For All The Fish

This is a final well done message, and a reminder about submission requirements for assignments.

Full details of your assignments and how to submit are on your Moodle areas. But here are the key links so you have them all in one email.

– This is the presentation used during the conference

– And this is the assignment #1 planning frame distributed on the day

– This one is an overview of the assessment requirements of the unit

– This one talks about the common assessment that ALL the students will complete

– And this is an exemplar.

– And this one talks through the second assessment that students on a 30credit unit do.

Project Coordinator’s Reflections

Firstly I wanted to say a massive thank you and well done to the team!

We have come a long way since the first conference in December. Not only have you created a fantastic idea, a magical world and inspiration to get Grimm mobile but you have inspired and engaged the children who we worked with over the course of the project.

As always when working in a large group it can be difficult to pull everyone’s ideas together and in fact all meet up at the same time to progress but as the project developed I could identify that you realised communication was the key to achieving the final outcome.

Our final result was achieved and you have created a theme based workshop idea that inspired and engaged children in literacy. In particular I have to say my favourite bits of the final outcome were the subtle places you managed to get reading and writing into the workshops. Including, but not limited to, the boarding passes, the departure board, the writing inside the safari area, the extra potion examples and all the additions to each workshop station.

You were able to identify the strengths and weaknesses from the pilot and move our Easter workshops on, this again took a lot of collaboration and communication. I know you have been an extremely hard working team and I hope you have all been able to see the benefit of the amount of work you have put in in relation to the final outcome. From the beginning of the project I was not certain how much of the organising I was going to be needed for and I had always hoped that as this was your project you would be able to pick it up as a group and steer it in the direction you wanted to go. I am very happy to report that I felt you did just that and so I was able to take on more of a guidance and consultant role rather than Project Lead.

One aspect I found very interesting from the whole experience (and some of you may have already picked up on it) is you, as a group, have been through the same process the children we work with at Grimm & Co. As you will be aware Grimm and Co’s ethos is very child led, the children are in charge of their own learning, I feel that your experience has mirrored this. In this approach, the more you engaged with the project and the more you invested and put in ultimately resulted in the more you got out of the experience. In addition, as a group, you chose the overall theme of the workshops which I also hope helped with your engagement and investment. Again this is an approach that we use at Grimm & Co to engage children in literacy, we allow them the space and opportunity to write about what interests them. Although this was unplanned I hope it helps you identify and unpick some of the pedagogy that links with this project.

You put in a lot of effort to create these workshops and on behalf of Grimm and Co I thank you all very much for your hard work and dedication. It has been a pleasure working with you all and we all wish you the best of luck with your studies and future careers. xx

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Developments since the pilot

Great analysis, lots to take in but you have covered everything we have discussed so far!

Amie Edlab Blog

During the February half term we piloted our workshops in the brooks building so that we could see how well the children engaged with them and where we could improve. We only had three kids show up to the day, however this also meant that I wasn’t too overwhelmed when facilitating the workshops and was able to walk around the workshops with them and see what they liked and what worked well.

The order in which the children went around the workshops was first to ‘The Museum of Magical Artefacts’ during which Lauren told them the story of Graham Grimm in order to bring them into the world of Grimm and Co. so that they would engage more with the other workshops. Lauren then brought them over to the Graham’s Trunk station. They then went over to the potions which they loved and the fact that they can also eat…

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EdLab Conference #3

EdLab Conference 24th March – 10am to 3pm
Agenda for Conference #3

10.00 Introductory Lecture: Assessment Orientations (Mark Peace and Mick Chesterman) Lecture Theatre 3

In this introductory session, we will revisit the assessment principles and requirement for the unit, and give some guidance on the kinds of forms that assessments can take.

11.00 Assignment Workshops

You will then move into your project teams, to begin to interrogate the substance, focus and form your assessment submissions will take. We want this session to give you space to actually get stuff done – so please bring along a device, and anticipate making a dent in working on your submission. Groups will report to the following rooms:

Elizabeth Gaskell’s House – BR 2.15 with John Lean
Early Years Explorers – BR 2.10 with Sean Mitchell
Environmental Play – BR 2.19 with Rachel Summerscales
The Language of Clay – BR 2.16 with Elle Simms
The Oubliette – BR 2.17 with Mark Peace
Mobilise Grimm and Co – BR 2.17 with Lauren Ash
The Game Makers – BR 2.18 with Mick Chesterman

In addition, we put on an additional workshop in BR 2.18 for students who have not engaged well enough in the process so far to feel confident in producing their assignments. It is important that you have identified yourselves to Mick Chesterman (m .chesterman @ mmu.ac.uk) ahead of the day.

13.00 Project Team Meetings / Working Lunch

The final hour of the day will be given over to project teams to continue any final development work on their planned outreach activity. Bring a packed lunch so that you can continue to work through this hour!

14.00 Ad Hoc Tutorials / Focused Session for the Students ‘Catching Up’ – 2.18/2.17

The remaining hour will be given over to allow further one-to-one support for students who need it, and for students ‘catching up’ with Mick to continue their development work.

If you do not need extra support, at this point, you are free to work independently on your assignment either in the spaces we have booked, or elsewhere.

15.00 END

Some (Further) Academic Context

Awe and Wonder

Here are a few other projects that create that feeling of awe and wonder immersive aspect that we at Grimm and Co aspire to;

https://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/the-lost-lending-library/

http://www.goatandmonkey.co.uk/pastproductions/perils/

Task: Integrating Reading

Produce at least one blog post which responds to something from the texts shared above. Refer to the previous blog post for guidance on the way you should approach your reading – and remember; we’re not interested in what the paper says, we’re interested in the way you put it to work (how does it help you think about the things you’re doing in your project)

Grimm & Co Pilot

I was planning a recap of last Mondays pilot, however Alicia had summed it up perfectly.

EdLab With Alicia

Today we held our pilot session for Mobilise Grimm & Co.

The session was very useful to identify strengths and weaknesses within our project. Notably, the session was a resounding success with the three children who attended… all of whom were engaged throughout and seemingly enjoyed their time in the Grimm atmosphere. However, albeit successful, there were a few issues identified, which were discussed during the plenary, and thus a solution was put into place.

Time Management

Setting up the room took longer than expected, meaning we ran out of time and were not anticipating the children’s arrival. For the official session, it was discussed that a room in Brooks is to be rented out for two days, meaning one day will be spent decorating the space to Grimm’s standard. If this isn’t possible and a room can only be rented for one day, then the team should arrive earlier…

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Goodie Bags

Ahead of Mondays Pilot I have been busy preparing some items for our goodie bags.

Pilot prep meeting

Today’s meeting brilliantly summed up by Amie.

Amie Edlab Blog

Today we met up to discuss how the day will run for our pilot on 19th February. The aim of the day is to test out whatever workshops we have all come up with and see what works and what we can do to improve the project.

We agreed that the best way to have the day run would to have a rotating system in which all the workshops are set up and children can move around each workshop and complete the tasks. At the start of the workshop the children will receive a goody bag that will include a booklet (Travel guide) which will have all the pages that they need for the different workshops to fill out. The children will also have stickers in the bag that they can put on a sticker chart to review the day, sticking a sticker on the workshops they liked best, so…

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Pilot

We are very excited to be announcing our first Mobilise Grimm and Co Pilot will be taking place next Monday 19th of February in The Brooks Building between 1pm and 3pm.

This is what we have planned;

Around the space we will have a number of workshops set up including

Potion making
Magical spy glass
Runes of recreation
Dialogue Box
Graham’s holiday equipment
Danger Signs

On arrival participants will be handed a goody bag and given a brief synopsis of the history of Grimm & Co and what is happening here today. The goody bag will include;

Booklet with all the worksheets
pencils
mini bottle
info about Grimm & Co
Stickers

They will then be able to move their way through all of the activities.

Each activity will be sign posted and decorated in true Grimm and Co fashion (black table cloths, fairy lights, bizarre objects etc.

We will use vintage style chalk boards to sign post the activities.

Examples of Activities

Potion Making

The Potion making will create edible sherbet out of magical animal products (mermaids tears, pixy dust etc) for the children to take away and eat. There will be a worksheet in the travel brochure for them to fill in and they can also fill in the section of the map worksheet to add where these potion ingredients can be found.

Further to this they may want to keep a bit of their potion in their mini bottle in the goody bag?

The potion making area will be decorated with old potion bottles and utensils to add the atmosphere.

Other workshops are yet to be confirmed but in addition to the workshop sections there will be some Grimm & Co atmosphere that can be developed for future events. These will include a mini museum of magical artefacts.

And possibly a mini Imagination Gym in the same style as the one at the Rotherham Grimm & Co. For example I have found a mini ‘Mind Oiler’. This equipment could be used on the parents to get their imagination flowing!

Further to this we may have a trunk of Graham’s (very outdated) magical being finding equipment. This might include an old-fashioned tape measure, some binoculars etc…