Tangled Feet at Tallis

This film tells the story of a week long residency by Tangled Feet Theatre Company at Tallis. The work was commissioned by young people on the Creative Tallis Action Research Group following a long period of research and reflection about creative learning. The group felt that it would be interesting to begin to think about our move to a new school (scheduled for September 2011) and reflect on the emotional and psychological issues around moving home. Tangled Feet are co-directed by an ex Tallis student, Kat Joyce, and had created a play entitled "Home" which has been touring the country in a range of alternative venues. We wanted to see if a theatre company comprised of Tallis students and the Tangled Feet actors and technicians could work collaboratively for a week to create a series of interventions in the building designed to provoke thoughts and ideas about physical and emotional spaces.

"All in all, great congratulations should go to the ARG, for their courage in managing a very experimental piece, the school for allowing it to go ahead and have these seemingly random things going on, and the performers for incredible application and focus. I've worked with schools for over 20 years, and I can think of very few, if any, that have the staff, students and outlook to pull off something like this."
John Riches, Creative Agent

Here is what Kat had to say about the residency (the full conversation can be read on our Tallis Talk message board):

"We had a brilliant time working at Tallis, and I think the fact that we didn't stop talking about it over the weekend stands as testament to what an unusual, challenging, exciting and really rewarding experience it was for us as a company. It was great to shake up the concept of what a residency could be, and to be commissioned and to negotiate directly with the students about what we did and made. We were absolutely bowled over by the maturity, bravery, initiative and positive creative attitude of all the students, which made it possible for us to achieve a really really ambitious cycle of events and interventions. I felt like the normal line between 'visiting professionals' and students' was erased and everyone worked together as a company. The size of the group was just right to allow everyone to make a really significant creative contribution. Things just seemed to happen and order came out of a happy chaos! I think that the Tallis experienced definitely prompted us as a company to stretch our skill-set, and to set a new benchmark for what we might achieve with young people in the future. It's really made me start to think what we could achieve if we put our minds to a longer-term project; in a way I feel like we only just started to scrape the surface together of the incredible skills-set that this group had. We'd love to come back and develop the myriad of ideas even further. And we're also keeping in mind that it would be great to return the invitation and invite some of the Tallis students to work professionally with us in some capacity with us on future projects that Tangled Feet develop."
Kat Joyce, Co-Director of Tangled Feet

We decided to make a mini website about the residency using the excellent Wix.

We are very proud of the students from Years 7 to 13 who took part in the project and especially those members of the ARG who helped to commission and co-ordinate the entire process. They displayed a real maturity and sense of ownership of the learning journey that will hopefully have provided them with a memorable experience and range of transferable skills.