What we've done in 2024 (and a look at 2023!)
Summer - week 1
Olympians - an Infinite Jest skills week where we invited VIP professionals to teach us their amazing skill. We had workshops in mime, stage combat, stand up comedy, performance poetry, cartoon drawing, and West End song & dance. What a week!!
Summer - week 2
Summer Celebration - an Infinite Jest party planning week where we created the Summer party to end all Summer parties, inspired by Summer celebrations the world over
May half term - Budding Gardeners
Three days of getting our fingers green, our imaginations verdant, and our creativity blooming!
Easter holidays - WHODUNNIT
This was massive fun!! Our "Shine Bright Like a Diamond" Whodunnit involved a host of characters - Mrs Periwinkle and her rare plumed parrot, Percy the pigeon, PC Pickles, the friendliest PC on the beat, Red Herring - Mrs Periwinkle's grumpy neighbour, Sue Keeper - head of exotic animals at London Zoo, Bianca Castafiore - aka the Milanese Nightingale - world-renowned opera singer whose voice can shatter glass at a 100 paces, and of course the Infinite Jest newshound, Jester Crackers, and his colleagues in the news room - weather man, Windy Bottom, sports reporter, Trusty Balls, bird expert, Phoenix Rising, and head of legal affairs, Brief Casey.....
Feb half term - Macbeth
A week exploring one of Shakespeare's most extraordinary plays. Kings, queens, noblemen, honour, bravery, friendship, ambition, envy, betrayal, dreams, witches, potions...... it's got it all.
We'll learnt about Shakespeare and his age, the characters and story of Macbeth, witches and witchcraft - and ended the week performing Infinite Jest's adaptation.
For me, IJ is proper creativity: it’s playful, it’s experimental, it’s anarchic. It encourages kids to try new things in an environment where The Worst Things That Could Happen (looking a bit silly or failing) not only isn’t a big deal, it’s shown how it’s a totally normal part of the creative process. I don’t know if there are many places for kids (or adults tbh) that allow for that. The shows are pure joy, the madder the better.
Feedback from our Macbeth camp
Happy New Year!
We've kicked off 2024 in style in Nunhead, Leyton, and Teddington with our Happy New Year drama camp. 4 days of fun, games, journeying around the world to find out how everyone likes to celebrate on 31 Dec, and prepping for our very own New Year's party for family and friends on the Friday. We reeled, we balloon dropped, we created fireworks, gifted ourselves envelopes full of promises, sang Auld Lang Syne, spun yarns, and told great jokes!
2023 was an a amazing year too!
Feb half term - Nunhead and Leyton
We had an amazing play-in-a-week week....where we plunged into Shakespeare's The Tempest.
‘Oh wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! Oh brave new world,
That has such people in’t.’
We explored this extraordinary play of power, magic, trickery, beasts, and fairies, revenge, love, ambition, innocence, longing, servitude, and redemption - and in our Infinite Jest way we called on our thetrical story telling skills - puppetry, mask, physical theatre, stage combat, song, dance, and more - to produce our adaptation for family and friends to enjoy at the end of the week!
Thanks so much for last week’s club. My son had a great time and it’s so lovely seeing Shakespeare brought to life for the children.
Easter hols
Ridiculous amounts of fun solving our dinosaur WHODUNNIT!
Infinite Jest news reader, Jester Crackers, reported that precious dinosaurs had been stolen from London's Natural History Museum. The Infinite Jest team snapped into action and trained up our brilliant young creatives as top notch detectives and over the course of five days they interviewed Steve the Security guard, Alice the palaeontologist, solved clues left behind at the scene of the crime, got into the head of a master criminal to truly understand their way of working, and ultimately concluded, correctly???, that the culprit was none other than dino-crazy billionaire philanthropist, Dino Rod.
A sensational week!!!
May half term
A feast of a half term, devising a show inspired by all things FOODY. We opened up the Infinite Jestaurant and welcomed friends and family to our wonderful, creative sharing at the end of the week.
We crafted chefs hats, created amazing concoctions
Summer holidays
Our most ambitious Summer ever - 7 weeks of camps over a fortnight in 4 different venues! Nunhead (2 venues), Leyton, Teddington
Week 1 - Galaxy Quest - we were inspired by all things SCIENCEY, from Atoms to Big Bangs and everything in between. Special guest, JB, came and performed a science show for us and we produced a fantastic show for family and friends at the end of the week.
Week 2 - Super Heroes - what a week! We had amazing VIP guests coming in to show us their incredible skills.
Steve McCourt and Philippa Hogg - song writing
Rajesh Rishudeo and Robin Webb - stage combat
Sarah Vickery and Ian Bass - cartoon drawing
Carlos Couto - capoeira
Danny Ladwa - beatboxing
October half term
We've just had the best week ever! Our Creative Creatures camp was a roaring creative success in Nunhead and Leyton. The wonderful Alice Humphreys, who designs our gorgeous posters, joined us from her home in Brighton and shared her extraordinary creative skills with us. We creative incredible creatures and hilarious stories and learnt about other influential artists like Yinka Ilori, Keith Hering, Jean-Michel Baptiste, and Yayoi Kusama. We created amazing puppets and masks, as well as beautiful artwork.
And at the end of the week we showed off our new found skills for family and friends.
A week to remember!!
