Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales

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Like many organisations in Wales, we are excitedly preparing to celebrate the 2014 centenary of Dylan Thomas’ birth. At UCAN our offering to the celebrations has a unique and international approach, which will soon become apparent in our next big project: Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales. We would like to thank The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travel Fellowship, Wales Arts International and The Arts Council of Wales for supporting this exciting new collaboration. For the project we will be co-creating a radio play of A Child’s Christmas in Wales, developed with audio description embedded within the text with our American partners Revels and Perkins Radio. Visually impaired young people from Wales and America will feature in the lead roles and create the accompanying music. We will also be staging live performances of our adaption in South East Wales. This project is funded by The Arts Council of Wales and it was made possible by a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship, which was awarded to UCAN’s Co-founder and Development Director Jane Latham in 2012. The fellowship enabled Jane to visit America and discover opportunities for UCAN members and develop new and lasting links with American organisations that support blind and partially sighted young people. To read more about the fellowship please click here. Jane was accompanied by her husband; UCAN’s Co-founder and Artistic Director Bernard Latham. With the support of Wales Arts International, Bernard traveled to America to build relationships with other arts organisation to initiate future collaborative projects. Jane said “We are delighted with the outcome of our visit to America and are very much looking forward to working with our American partners. We feel we have made real progress in developing links between the visually impaired communities here in Wales and in America and hope this will be the beginning of long and meaningful partnerships.” To find out about the official Dylan Thomas 100 festival, please go to their website: http://www.dt100.info/

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The 2013 UCAN Perform Festival

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This year’s UCAN Perform Festival was enjoyed by over 180 visually impaired children and young people and their friends and family from across Wales and the South West of England.  The festival was kindly hosted by the Wales Millennium Centre and participants traveled from as far as Anglesey and Pwllheli to attend.

UCAN Trainers were for the first time supported by our UCAN Lead graduates, who have successfully completed a year long level 1 drama workshop leader training programme.  A variety of workshops were run throughout the day, including drama and ukulele workshops, jewellery making, circus skills and the very last Radio UCAN workshop.  A tactile art workshop also accompanied a new exhibition of tactile art works and drawings created by visually impaired young people and their friends from South Wales.

At lunch time we had a very special performance from the Inner Vision Orchestra, which was organised by Lloyd Coleman; the chairman of our Young People’s Steering Committee and presented by Baluji Shrivastav.  Lloyd accompanied the orchestra playing Clarinet and together with Baluji, a special music workshop took place after the performance.

In the afternoon the Haf Morris Ukulele Orchestra took over the Wales Millennium Centre with a Ukulele Flashmob.  It was a fantastic performance and we would like to again thank the family of Haf Morris for their generous donation.  As is our custom, we finished the festival with an open mic session on the Glanfa stage, where we saw talents ranging from break dancing skills to singing and a comedy sketch.  We’ve collected together some feedback from the festival’s participants:

‘I have really enjoyed today. It was so lovely to see everyone and I am so glad I attended. Can’t wait to see you all soon. So I just want to say a huge thank you for today’ – Amy

‘Thanks everyone who was involved, for a brilliant day again this year at the festival.  Was lovely catching up with old and new friends again for not just the kids but mums and dads too.  I’m really proud too say that Haf Morris taught both me and Steve at Ysgol Sir Thomas Jones, so to have her memory live on through UCAN was kinda special, as I have some fun memories of her bless “trying too teach me” ( i must have tested her patience at times ) her desk i still see cluttered with music notes and test papers and her flask of coffee in the middle of it all. Miss Morris would have taken so much pleasure from watching the music workshops and seeing the end result’ – Beverley

‘I cannot believe that a whole week has passed since we traveled up to Cardiff to spend the day with our beautiful UCAN family. What a wonderful day we had, from the moment we arrived you went out of your way to make us feel welcome.  Quite a few times throughout the day I had to wipe away a tear, my heart bursting with pride. A treasured memory for me of the day was being able to celebrate with you the achievements of your newly qualified workshop leaders.  They are a tribute and fantastic ambassadors for UCAN. There is no doubting how proud of them you all are, but as I glanced around the sea of smiling faces that day, Bernie and Jane’s gorgeous smiles where shining the brightest of all. Lovely day, lovely memories’ – Jenny

‘Thank you to everyone for a great day yesterday, Angharad enjoyed every minute of the day and loved seeing everyone again’ – Lynda

We would like to again say a big thank you to the festival’s main funder Legal & General; Arts & Kids Cymru for funding our tactile art project ‘Tactiles’; Wales Millennium Centre for hosting the festival; and to everyone who participated, the UCAN Lead team, our trainers & all of our lovely volunteers.  All photographs taken by Heather Winstanley. Thanks Heather!

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UCAN Lead Graduation

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The UCAN Lead Level 1 Graduation took place last week at our annual UCAN Perform Festival.  The graduation celebrated the successful completion of a yearlong drama workshop leader training programme, which was led by the expert professional guidance of Dinos Aristidou and came to an end in March.

‘The Level 1 UCAN Lead prepared young people to become workshop leaders and I’m proud to say that watching them lead workshops and work with children gave me an incredible sense of pride in their competence, their manner, their confidence and the way they deal with all the unpredictable things that come with workshops. It was a really inspiring and joyful process and I have every confidence that the UCAN Lead participants will run wonderful workshops in the future and engage many children and young people with theatre. Once again it was a great pleasure to work with UCAN and be part of their outstanding programmes’ – Dinos Aristidou

The UCAN Lead Level 1 programme equipped participants with the skills to become workshop leaders and we are delighted to say that a number of the participants have since gone on to be employed as workshop leaders.  We would like to thank the Arts Council of Wales for funding this project and Cardiff University, The School of Optometry and Vision Sciences, College of Biomedical and Life Sciences for their generous support.  Below are a selection of photographs from the graduation ceremony; certificates were given out by board member Nicola Crews and also some photographs from UCAN workshops led by UCAN Lead.

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The 2013 Festival

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On Tuesday 23rd July we held our annual festival at the Wales Millennium Centre.  A fantastic day was had by all and we will soon put up a full post about the day’s activities with comments from our members and their families.

We would like to say a big thank you to the festival’s main funder Legal & General; Arts & Kids Cymru for funding our tactile art project ‘Tactiles'; Wales Millennium Centre for hosting the festival; and to everyone who participated, the UCAN Lead team, our trainers & all of our lovely volunteers.

Below are a selection of photographs from the day taken by Heather Winstanley.  More to follow!

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