Space Invaders - transition through invasion

During the summer holidays schools are normally quiet, empty spaces. Not so in West Dunbartonshire. Here the Cultural Co-ordinator team worked closely with schools and family support staff to allow young people to ‘invade’ their new secondary school, taking over the dead space and making it their own.

Primary children about to make the huge step up to high school are invited to take over and transform their new school using sculpture, animation, drama, drumming, dance, costume making and circus skills. For a week they explore the school, identifying strange and interesting areas before transforming them with materials and art work into even stranger and exciting fantastical worlds.

On the final day families, friends and teaching staff arrive for a ‘guided tour’ of these worlds. What was once the gym corridor is now a haunted mine.  What was once a small entrance room is now a possessed chess board, a stairwell is illuminated with animations and becomes a nest of poisonous spiders, and what should have been a school stage has become a courtroom where the audience are the accused! The audience are cajoled, chased and led through these corridors where nothing is as they expected, feeling both fear and excitement at the hands of the children; much like the first days at a new school.

Since the Cultural Co-ordinators first created the programme, Space Invaders has expanded to include all seven secondary schools in West Dunbartonshire and summer schools in urban arts, film making, street theatre and visual art.

Radio commercials written and recorded by the children involved have even been used to promote the programme across the authority.

The difficult transition from primary to secondary education is tackled directly through the arts in West Dunbartonshire. Space Invaders allows children to forge friendships with those from other primary schools, explore the new building and orientate themselves before having to face the rest of the school and its teachers. The project allows their first experience of secondary school to be a creative and exciting one, generating enthusiasm for learning that might otherwise be lost. Confidence, self esteem, pride, friendships, loss of fear and increased enthusiasm for their new school are all proven benefits of this programme of arts activities, in addition to the breadth of arts skills the children are exposed to.

Memories of Space Invaders are kept alive through a DVD documentary each year.  This means every child can revisit their achievement and relive this positive experience of secondary education for years to come.

 

Check out what else is going on in West Dunbartonshire Council by visting their Art & Education Links Programme website!