Victorian Games 2007

Pontefract Liquorice Festival is an annual event run byn the Pontefract Liquorice Trust, which happens in July of each year. Pontefract Liquorice Trust has built a solid relationship with local arts company, Faceless, who, as project managers, have broadened the scope of the festival to a diverse,high quality professional and participatory artistic programme.  

About Faceless Company's involvement; Faceless Company began project managing the Festival for Pontefract Liquorice Trust in 2000 and have applied their extensive practical street performance and community arts knowledge to develop the Liquorice Festival programme year on year thus enhancing audiences' experience of quality arts & participatory arts activity.

About the Victorian Games Project; This participatory arts & heritage project was designed to:
    Train local artists into delivering, historically accurate, fun and creative workshops for young people.
    Support teachers in delivering creative, fun and informative lessons to pupils on the Victorian Era. Going beyond the curriculum to foster childrens understanding of Victorian Children's lives and the time period.
    Further pupils' understanding of a day-to-day life from the viewpoint of Victorian children and develop their understanding of children's lives in relation to their own.
    Teach them about traditional toys & games in comparison to their own and build a traditional Victorian toy theatre in groups of 5 or more for public display.

Artist Training;  2 Faceless Community Artists took part in training traditional Victorian Toy Theatre making techniques with Joe Gladwin from Paper Play Theatres.
Over two days they built an example theatre and learned about the history of these beautiful theatres.
They were also given resources for future workshops and Joe and his theatre full of charachters gave some dramatic performances.


    Pictures here

Teacher Support; Teachers received an information pack to accompany the workshops and support their participation in the project, it included resources and information and lesson plan ideas on Victorian children's lives. It also had activities, designed to support the work of the artist in workshops and the evaluation of the project, such as diary and scrapbook work. As well as this, it included links to further sources of information for more in depth study on Victorian England. They also received email and telephone support throughout the project.

" Very well put together.....we have really enjoyed being part of the Liquorice Festival and enjoyed the first -hand experience of playing and making Victorian Games"
Catherine Myers, Year 4 Teacher, Cobblers Lane Primary School

School Workshops; 90 young people from three schools in Pontefract took part in 12 workshops prior to the Liquorice Festival 2007, gaining new skills in drama and the arts. The workshops took place over four days with each school, when 2 artists worked with pupils to create a unique 30 minute performance for each school to show in Valley Gardens on Victorian Day.

The schools we worked in were:
St Josephs Catholic Primary School (Year 4)
Cobblers Lane Primary School (Year 4)
Holy Family and St Michaels Catholic Primary School (Year 6) 

The workshops covered a variety of activities leading towards participation in Victorian Day 2007. They included:
Drama Role Play activities
Traditional outdoor Victorian Games
Making Traditional Victorian Theatres

The sharings included, poems and songs written by the participants and involved audience members learning about traditional games played by Victorian children, including;
Croquet
Diablo
Hunt the Ring
Hopscotch

During the workshops in schools, pupils were given the task of designing and building a toytheatre in the style of traditional Victorian Toy Theatres. 

Pupils were split into groups of 5 or more to make each theatre , encouraging groupwork and cooperation. They used traditional methods and original templates from the day to build their theatres, with the help of trained artists from Faceless Company.

Young people also designed charachters for their theatres using Fairy Tales as inspiration and plan to use these for further study.

Students from one school asked for additional web references in order to do further research on the theatres, saying...
"We're going to make one at home and put on a performance and sell tickets to make money."
Participant, Holy Family & St Michaels Catholic Primary School.

 After the workshop, the theatres were collected from schools and displayed at Pontefract Library in a special exhibition, both during and after the Liquorice Festival for the young people to view along with their family and friends and members of the public, visiting Pontefract for the Festival. After the exhibition the theatres were returned to the schools for further use in class and when studying the Victorians.

The Victorisan Games Project 2007 fulfilled the aims of both the Liquorice Trust and Faceless Company through many different means. It provided opportunities for people of all ages, cultures and backgrounds to participate in creative activity. It reconnected local people with the heritage of their area, celebrating and promoting internationally, the town's victorian and industrial heritage.

Through workshops in schools, we facilitated educational projects within cultural events, actively encouraging young people and their community to develop an interest in the Victorian heritage of the town. By working with newer Pontefract residents, many of whom have English as a second language, we helped introduce new communities to the lives of those living in Victorian Britain.

This project sought to raise the aspirations of young people in Pontefract, through exploring their heritage and that of their community. By exploring the lives of young people in Britain over 150 years ago, we can discover a lot about their lives today, how they fit into the world and what they have to offer.

Pontefract Liquorice Festival brings people together to celebrate community identity, culture, diversity and acheivements; promoting understanding and tolerance and reaching out to involve new people and groups, especially marginalised communities and those less well served both enhancing the national and international profile of the town and supporting local businesses.

To view the pictures on this page and all of the pictures from the 2007 Liquorice Festival go to the 2007 Festival Gallery

For more information about the Pontefract Liquorice Festival Victorian Games Project, or to receive a copy of the teacher support pack, please contact: Charlie Wells, Community Engagement Manager, at Faceless Company, Unit E, Fox Way, Trinity Business Park, Wakefield, WF2 8EE or telephone 01924 335985.


Victorian Day Funded by: