Storm & Brook's Wondrous Water World Adventures

Storm & Brook’s

Wondrous Water World Adventures

Introduction We’re entering a watery world of mythical rainforests and a kingdom in the clouds. Through the imagination of children, new and exciting things can be discovered, along with new skills and inspiration you may have never dreamed possible.

There is nothing stale about the captivating and mesmerizing stories told by the primary school children of Harwood Park Primary School, Heap Bridge Primary School, Hopwood Community Primary School, St Luke’s CE Primary School and St Margaret’s CE Primary School.

As well as working with professional writers Martin Stannage and Louise Wallwein, the participating classes also worked with visual artist Isobel Pickup to create the images you see here and an exhibition for Darnhill Library and Heywood Sports Village.

They also received radio training from All FM’s Jason Cooke.

The Darnhill Festival Association helped to create the images of Darnhill.

The scripts that were produced were equal in both their brilliance and their inventiveness and the images unique and captivating.

This booklet is a celebration of the project and includes the background to how it happened, as well as a CD featuring all five radio plays and an epilogue recorded by young people from M6 Theatre.

Before It All Began There are five episodes (plus an epilogue) and a total of five adventures to five different watery worlds. Each episode is its own journey, but also a mini adventure within the bigger adventure.

The episodes can be listened to in any order, with each one lasting approximately 10 minutes. The titles are as follows

The Mystical Rainforest Written by pupils from Heap Bridge Primary School & Louise Wallwein

The Cloud Kingdom Written by pupils from Hopwood Community Primary School & Martin Stannage

The River Roch Monster Written by pupils from St Margaret’s CE Primary School & Martin Stannage

Aquarium Adventure Written by pupils from Harwood Park Primary School & Louise Wallwein

A Drop in the Ocean Written by pupils from St Lukes CE Primary School & Louise Wallwein

Epilogue: Darnhill The 5 locations were decided at a planning meeting with the schools involved, and the two writers Martin and Louise came up with the three main characters. All of this information was included in a shared writing frame that was given to everyone for reference.

The other characters that feature in the radio plays, and what happens in them, was created during the sessions.

The Characters A girl and a boy, both children but different ages so it appeals to different audiences. They know each other before the plays begin. And their fish. These 3 characters are travelling together and are constant throughout.

BROOK BRIGHTLEY

STORM HILL

HOUDINI

Aged 12, male, is clever – good at problem solving, logical … but can’t swim. He’s smart and the brains, knows everything. Although he can be persuasive he’s also fairly easily frightened of numerous things – including water.

Aged 9 or 10 (same age as the writers), female, is brave and fearless. The heroine: a seeker.

Athletic. Gets stuck in and gets on with it – do now think later.

A talking goldfish.

An escape artist … with a sense of humour (the funny character in the plays). Everyone expects him to have the attributes of a goldfish i.e. short memory but this fish actually has a photographic memory.

Very good at thinking on his feet (fins).

The Cloud Kingdom After drinking some magical potion, our heroes end up in the magnificent Cloud Kingdom. But while up there, they are captured by the evil Smog Witch, and the only way they can escape is to clear the pollution!

The Mystical Rainforest Storm, Brook and Houdini are involved in a scientific experiment and as a result end up visiting the rainforest and meeting a tribe of toast people. Entering a maze, they help the tribe discover water and save the rainforest.

Aquarium Adventure After being transformed into human fish, Storm and Brook find themselves trapped in an aquarium! They meet another old friend of Houdini’s, as well as fearless crocodile crew, The Snappy Seven. But can their new allies help them escape before they are eaten up by the giant octopus?

The River Roch Monster While Houdini pops off to visit his friends in the river, Storm and Brook discover an an old treasure map ‌ little do they know the perils that lie ahead!

A Drop in the Ocean A trip to the swimming pool ends up with our heroes finding their way into an underwater world and meeting a shark and dolphin who aren’t best pleased about the pollution humans cause. It's up to Storm and Brook to find a way to make peace between the two worlds!

Darnhill Epilogue Our intrepid team return home for a well-deserved rest.

The real stars of the show are of course the children who got their creative ideas bubbling away and produced the wonderful scripts that let your imagination run away. With all involved buzzing with the excitement of the project, will they be the writers and best-selling authors or tomorrow?

Let’s find out what they thought about it.

"It was fun and relaxing and because we daydreamed and it made my brain exploded of ideas."

"I really like the setting that was picked out for us because the sky if never ending, the adventure doesn’t end."

"It was good because I get a chance to share my story with my class."

"The writing was good because it was very creative and I learned different skills."

"The poetry made me think and imagine lots of things in my mind and express myself."

"The writing sessions made me back into my imagination and think of new creative ideas."

"We got to make it up and use our imagination."

"I thought the games were brilliant and the art was excellent ‌ we were taught different techniques."

"It made me think of a land far far away."

"I liked the writing because I got to express my self."

"I liked the writing because it made me think of and feel all different things and emotions."

"The writing made me look into my imagination to think of new ideas."

"As I was writing my ideas were floating."

Try your hand at writing the story We know that Storm, Brook and Houdini are used to traveling together, but how did they meet – what are your ideas? Why not try and write your very own episode to explain how the three of them met in the first place?

Are there are other watery worlds that you think our adventurers could visit?

What might happen to them? Who – or what – might they meet?

Have a go at writing another adventure for our intrepid explorers …

When you’ve done that, you may want to think about what happens when Storm, Brook and Houdini get home to Darnhill.

Do they travel anywhere else – not just watery worlds – and if so where?

Or does life continue to be as exciting back in Darnhill?

Become a sound engineer You can create stories like the ones in our project used Audacity – free sound editing software.

Why not have a go at making your own recordings and sound effects?

You can download the software from: www.audacityteam.org

Act it out

Get Creative

All of the scripts for the five radio episodes and the epilogue are available to download from www.shinepartnership.co.uk/ index.php/shine-radio.

Throughout this booklet are illustrations of some of the characters that appear in this story. Why not have a go at drawing your own pictures to represent the different watery worlds that they visit in each episode?

Why not choose your favourite episode and see if you can recreate it with your friends? Do the characters sound the same or different?

Does this change the story?

ures t n e v d

Darnhill Festival 2016 You can also listen to the episodes on Cartwheel Arts audio boom channel https://audioboom.com/CartwheelArts

Wondrous k’s

& Bro m r o o St

r Worl d A ate W

Cast list: Coral Bradley, Jason Cooke, Tom Hall, Caroline Kennedy, Coral Mulligan, Connor O’Mahoney, Lizzie Wilson

This is a Tell Us Another One project developed by Cartwheel Arts and the Darnhill Festival Association.

Cartwheel Arts promotes social inclusion, cohesion, diversity and regeneration through community participation in vibrant, innovative and high-quality arts projects. Since 2003 we have worked together with the Darnhill Festival Association on numerous events including the annual Darnhill Festival. Taking place each summer, the Festival always has a theme and for 2016 the theme was the Water Cycle.

With support from our creative writing project Tell Us Another One, and working together with the Shine Partnership (Supporting Heywood IN Excellence), five primary schools each wrote an episode of a radio play which was then recorded by a cast of young actors from M6 Theatre. The radio plays were recorded at All FM by Jason Cooke and broadcast on All FM in July 2016. www.cartwheelarts.org.uk www.tellusanotherone.org www.shinepartnership.co.uk The project had a strong creative writing focus, but also leaned towards a cross-curricular approach (including ICT), with teachers and pupils from all the schools taking part in CPD sessions focusing on radio production delivered by All FM. Finally, a big thank you to all involved.