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LISTEN Festival opens with film collaboration…

Opening film in collaboration with ‘One Borough One Love’ Festival

We’re pleased to be opening our one month long LISTEN Festival with this short film by Green Shoes Arts sees local Composer, Omar Awuah and Lighting Designer Mike Toon, creating a sound and light installation in Marks Gate to share residents’ unique stories and experiences of this tight-knit community.
The short film will then feature on Green Shoes Arts’ website as part of LISTEN Festival.

Launching initially as part of the One Borough One Love Festival Online, which features all of your favourite entertainment from the Summer of festivals plus workshops and family fun – One Borough One Love Festival will be headlined by Britain’s greatest female rock and soul voice, Lulu. The online festival will also feature children’s television presenter Andy Day and British Folk singer Beans On Toast, as well as:
- live local performances
- arts and crafts
- poetry, family magic and puppet show
- live dedications to our local superheroes
- share your love for the festival by decorating your home with the love heart craft kit
Follow us on social media to find out about this and local events.
Learn more here:
One Borough One Love Festival: https://www.lbbd.gov.uk/one-borough-one-love
LISTEN Festival: https://www.greenshoesarts.com/listen-festival/
Green Shoes Arts Meets East London Solutions’ Quality Standards
London Borough of Barking & Dagenham
Extending a big thank you to the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham for their support on
a number of projects since 2009, including our Adult LD Arts & Drama Group, Creative for Life, and Dance for Life.
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Global Fund for Children
Green Shoes Arts would like to extend a very warm thank you to the Global Fund for Children for funding us for a number of years on Young People’s Projects, Organisational Development, Core Costs, Equipment, and Venue Hire.
Children In Need

We appreciate your support!
Big Lottery Reaching Communities

Inspire Festival Workshops with Coda Dance Company at St Theresa’s Catholic Primary School
Inspire Festival Workshops with CoDa Dance Company at St Theresa’s Catholic Primary School
Led by Artistic Director and Choreographer Nikki Watson, CoDa Dance Company is a London and Surrey based contemporary dance and physical theatre company that aims to enable people from all walks of life to experience and engage in dance in a fun and accessible way. We deal with real life issues and allow people to engage in social and political issues through dance participation.
Nikki Watson of CoDa Dance Company has been working with St Theresa’s Catholic Primary School Pupils. Working with 22 Year 4, 5 and 6 girls, we have been investigating some important and pivotal points of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham in the 1960’s at the time of the formation of the Borough.
Music Exploration: During Week 1, we worked together with the school pupils to listen to some of the popular music of the 1960’s. The pupils of St Theresa’s were able to identify that there was a theme of revolution and change within the words of the songs. It was a time of change in society and this shows through the popular music of the time. We played with songs such as “My Girl” by The Temptations, “My Generation” by The Who, and “Keep on Running” by the Spencer Davis Group. We identified that all of these songs had a feeling of change. We related this to the social change within the Borough and the way in which people felt about their lives and how they could have an impact on moving forward.
We related this to the revolution of change and how women at the Ford Factory were no longer willing to work for less than their male counterparts. To contextualise this, we discussed what it would feel like at school if boys had more rights than girls.
Picture Exploration: To further contextualise the joy that women felt at being granted better pay (not quite equal to their male counterparts – but more than they had received previously), we looked at a number of images taken at the time after the strikes. The images showed joy and had a feeling of great excitement around them. Individually, the pupils took these images as inspiration to create a short movement sequence. The pupils then went into small groups, and we combined their movements and actions to create a longer movement sequence. The pupils then agreed what music they felt reflected their movements the most, and we put them together to crate a short piece of dance.
The pupils were able to express at the end of the session what we had investigated and how this was reflected and represented in the dance piece.
As the sessions go on we will continue to work on this feeling of joy and revolution as a celebration of women’s rights and equal pay. The pupils have expressed how important this point in history is and how that has had such a positive impact on their lives today.
Time permitting, we would like to be able to explore 3 parts of dance:
- Pre-stikes and inequality
- The Strikes
- The celebration of being granted better pay
This whole exploration allows the pupils to explore their history creatively, and to engage in creative activity that they have ownership over and can be proud of their achievements to perform in front of an audience at the Inspire Festival.
Chadwell Heath Cinema Club Presents American Classics Season
Chadwell Heath Cinema Club proudly presents its first season of films, beginning with a screening of Bullitt (1968, 15) on 24 April 2015 at 7.45 pm. Please arrive a few minutes early to secure a seat!
Tickets are £3 to be purchased at the door.
All screenings take place at the Chadwell Heath Community Centre.
Save the dates! Our American Classics Season includes:
Friday 24 April – Bullitt (15) at 7.45 pm
Friday 15 May – American Beauty (18) at 7.45 pm
Friday 19 June – Stand By Me (15) at 7.45 pm
Saturday 27 June – Badlands (18) at 7.45 pm
Saturday 25 July – Duck Soup (U) at 6.30 pm
Please join the event on Facebook and share it with your friends! Contact info@greenshoesarts.com with any questions.
2014 RSA London Youth Award/Rising Stars Youth Festival
Green Shoes Arts is in the news! Click here to read about this past December’s Rising Stars Youth Festival, and the hard work the young people put in from August to make it happen.
Our journey so far… 2012-2013
Year One: Exploring. We had lots of ideas, some contacts and a few funding opportunists. We explored all these avenues and facilitated diverse projects from a long term arts leadership project in Barking & Dagenham funded by the local authority to a youth empowerment project in Tower Hamlets funded by an extended schools network. We were guided by values of quality and participation but there was no coherence to the projects we developed. It was however an amazing way to learn about our strengths, to explore partnerships and put our ideas into practice.
Year Two: Exploding. We received a large commission from Communicates & Local Government under the last administration for a project called Creative Community which was part of a wider invasive called Inspiring Communiques. Working alongside other organisations in a very specific area in Dagenham, the aim was to raise inspirations amongst eleven to fourteen year olds and their families. Working with participants aged three to ninety-‐ eight, we reached over three hundred local community members. This enabled us to learn more about our community, develop our project management skills and form positive links with other services and organisations.
Year Three: Focusing. The large-‐scale commission had finished and we began to focus on our core projects using everything we had learned. We were now very much rooted in Barking and Dagenham and begun new, on-‐going projects including our junior youth theatre and what was to become our children’s theatre. We became resolute in the need for on-‐going weekly provision that offers opportunists to develop both artistic and leadership skills. We wanted these projects to be firmly rooted in a local community, create high-‐quality artistic outcomes and offer accreditation.
Year Four: Consolidation. This year has been a :me for us to build on these core projects and strengthen the decisions we have made in terms of our focus as an organisation. Our on ‐ going projects have become a coherent programme of activities with a youth theatre for three different age groups from five to eighteen and a strand for disabled young people, a dance leadership programme and an artist development programme. We have reduced the number of short term projects we deliver and ensure any we do deliver are in partnership with another organisation who can offer referral routes and on‐going participation to anyone we work with. We can also offer our own referral route into our on ‐ going programmes. This year, we have focused on making all of this sustainable and simply trying to make it better. The projects continue to evolve which is important for them to stay relevant yet we now have a model which is based on all of our previous explorations. Our next step is to make this model financially sustainable to continue to improve its impact. Our successful public fundraising drive and work with a professional fundraiser are making this seem more and more like a potential reality.
So that’s our journey so far. We explored the landscape. We made great strides across it picking up material as we went. We used what we had seen and what we had collected to start a camp. Now we are building that camp into a community; one that will be inclusive and creative; and one that will last.