Our Biennale is a festival of arts and culture made with children and young people in Kirklees. Throughout the festival, musicians, artists, theatre-makers, and choreographers work with schools, colleges, and communities to enable children and young people to make their very own remarkable pieces of music, art, poetry, drama, and dance.
As part of this year’s Our Biennale programme, hcmf// collaborated with Huddersfield-based Sangam Festival to deliver a series of workshops at Crossley Fields School in Mirfield. Delivered by the fantastic Nisha Lall and Salma Zaman of NL Dance, the Our Biennale theme of ‘Magnificent Me’ was followed beautifully with a project incorporating poetry and dance inspired by South Asian culture and heritage.
Crossley Fields’ Year Six groups were invited to produce poetic responses to the idea of what makes them ‘magnificent’. The responses were authentic to each child’s imagination; sometimes funny and sometimes touching, the point here was for each child to take an active involvement in their own expression of self. Their poems were then recorded and used as part of a piece of music which the children created a unique choreographed dance to.
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The whole performance finished with a grand finale, held outside on the school field, involving over 90 children dancing to a famous piece of music from Bollywood cinema. The overall effect was indeed magnificent! This performance was streamed via the school’s channels to parents and a live audience consisting of other year groups from the school.
Feedback from the young people who took part included:
‘I think it was very creative – I’ve never taken part in anything like it before!’
‘It was fun because we had to use our imagination for the dance moves and the poetry.’
‘It was energetic and fun, every part of your body was moving. The poetry had a powerful message too.’
‘It was a very good way for children to exercise and be happy and I enjoyed taking part with my whole year group.’
In addition to this in-school event, hcmf// and Sangam Festival had the pleasure of curating a part of the Our Biennale Finale celebration that took place in Huddersfield town centre on Saturday 2 July. We invited professional dhol drummers to perform for the public and to take part in the final parade with all the other schools who took part in the process.
‘It was a fabulous uplifting experience seeing the town come alive with the sounds from different cultures and the voices of children as they paraded in wonderful costumes carrying larger than life puppets. A highly successful project from whichever angle you look at it. Well done to all those involved.’
Qaisar Mahmood, Sangam Festival Director
Many thanks to Our Biennale for including us in another magnificent year of events, we can’t wait until next time. Huge thanks to Sangam Festival for being brilliant collaborators on this project and to Nisha Lall and Salma Zaman for being excellent workshop leaders. Lastly thank you to Crossley Fields School for taking part, especially to Year Six staff and students for taking such an active interest in the topic.
