Get Started - Lilac Project - January Session

Maracas, Meetings and Multi-coloured Crime scenes

This was the first Get Started session of 2014, a Big Lottery funded project working with Progress Housing Trust. In this first workshop of the year, Artlink met Lilac - a group of adult tenants, who meet monthly to represent their accommodation from different areas in Leeds.

This session was all about our relationships with one another – about who we are as individuals in relation to one another.   Some of this we figured out by looking.  Observation skills are very important in any art form and we experimented with ours first by comparing eye colour, hand and foot size and height and ordering ourselves accordingly.  Aside from being fun, this allowed us to get to know one another better and also involved the use of another sense, that of touch.

Speaking of touch, Peter was a little touchy when we told him we would be drawing on the walled windows!   But there would have been no hiding the multi-coloured crime scene with whole silhouettes and body parts outlined in gorgeous coloured liquid chalk!  It wasn’t just shapes either; some people became really engaged in adding detail to the outlines of their partner’s silhouettes while some preferred to add moustaches and nails to their own.

Another way in which we got to know one another was through our voices and ears, through speaking and listening, trying to detect the truth from the lies. 

How did the artists Becky and Bryony first meet?

1

When they worked together at a circus – Bryony as a trapeze artist and Becky as a high wire walker.

2

At a friend’s house on a sofa on a Sunday.  When they looked round they were the only ones left.  They had enjoyed talking so much that they hadn’t even noticed.

3

They bumped into one another (literally) at Leeds-Bradford airport and then were seated next to one another on a plane to Sweden.

Participants were challenged to guess which one of these stories was true (by blowing feathers through straws) and which were false (by shaking their maracas).   Much laughter was had after the stories had been embellished and told but not everyone got it right. 

I wonder if readers can guess correctly?  

Lilac then worked in pairs to come up with their own stories, which we recorded.  They were very good at it – telling us convincingly and giving us stories that sounded incredibly believable about watching films together, singing at a karaoke night, being in the same class together and joining the Chippendales (alright, that was less believable but very funny).  It was a great end to a fun session in which everyone got to know everyone else a little better and also discovered some new talents.   

Becky and Bryony