China Pearl is a Chinese Arts & Culture organisation based in Liverpool. www.china-pearl.co.uk This blog is about our projects.
Our blogs will keep you informed of our classes, events and news as well as information about Chinese culture.
Thank you for visiting.
We organized
an event on 21st February 2016 at the Black-E to celebrate Chinese
Lantern Festival to mark the end of Chinese New Year with dance, music, Tai Chi, singing, costumes and Flashmob performances, workshops, short films, dumpling sampling
and stalls. It was a very successful event; we had around 100 people involved
and 700 people visiting the event with a lot of families and children and
received great feedback. We had audience from Liverpool, Manchester, North Wales and performers from Merseyside, Birmingham and Yorkshire.
Here are some comments from an
audience and participants:
Can I say I was absolutely moved by all the artists I'd seen. Fabulous! What a great reach to include all cultures. I think we need more.
What a lovely celebration of Chinese culture, beautifully sung, danced and played. Well done!
“Beautiful festival. Very
educational and fun for families. Thank you!"
This year we delivered Han Chinese cultural project to celebrate the Year of the Goat. Now it has successfully completed. We would like to thank our funders, partner organisations, artists, volunteers, participants and audience involved in this project.
Here is the summery and report on the project:
1.What happened in the
project?
1)Chinese
Gangham style Flashmob
We delivered several flashmob sessions including open classes at Bluecoat Arts Centre and lessons with Growing Old Disgracefully (GOD) and Liverpool Caribbean Community, produced an online training video for a wider audience to learn the routine themselves,
performed the flashmob at our Lantern Festival event in March in Liverpool City Centre.
2)Move
It
Four dancers from our company performed a traditional Chinese dance at Move It, the UK's largest dance event, at London
Olympiad on 8th February
We organised an event to celebrate Lantern Festival and also to promote our show at Unity Theatre on 8th March at Clayton Square in Liverpool City Centre with Lion
dance, Chinese dance, singing, martial arts display, costume catwalk and flashmob
We delivered dance and music performances and crafts workshops to LMH and
Pine Court residents including Flaxman Court, Alderwood Lodge, Handel Court,
Telford Court and Chung Hok House as well as Sedgemoore Care Home.
We put on two shows at Unity Theatre on 28th March featuring dance and
music along with martial arts, costume catwalk, films about tea ceremony and
calligraphy as well as a live tea ceremony during the break time
We received funding from ACE, LMH (Liverpool
Mutual Homes), Pine Court Housing Association, P H Holt Foundation, Unity Theatre and support
in kind from MDI, Hondu Chinese Supermarket, Liverpool City Bid Company, Museum of Liverpool, Liverpool Loves, Liverpool Confidential, BBC Radio Merseyside and Liverpool Echo.
3.People
we involved and reached out
We engaged around 40 local and national artists and created over 60 job opportunities, 60 volunteers, 200 people to participate, over 6000 live audience and over 50000 online audience and media views.
In general, because we obtained less
funding than we planned, we ought to reduce the scale of the project; also
because of the artists and volunteers’ availability we changed the dates and
cast accordingly. 6. Improvements We could have done a little more rehearsals and preparations, and maybe appointed an assistant director to check the details before the performers went on the stage, while our director Fenfen had to focus on her performances on the day, to make sure every single details including costumes, subtitles, backdrops were spot on. For instance, during Imperial China, the collar should have left on top of right not the other way around, and one of the performers wore that wrongly during matinee; the narration in the tea ceremony film was quite fast leaving audience not much time to read. The headpieces for one of the dance pieces were too big and did not quite reflect the style during the period when the dance was from. To sum up, this project was good success with a unprecedentedly large scale involving much more people, a wider audience and high-profile media coverage overseas. In the meantime, we learnt a lot in term of producing, directing, the content of the show and cultural significance and will improve from that and continue presenting quality work to the audience in the future.
We delivered Chinese dance and music performances and Chinese dance workshops funded by HOP for Moss View Care Home residents. We had very good feedback from the residents and staff.
We delivered performances in dance and music and workshops in Chinese dance and mask making to celebrate the most important festival after Chinese New Year 'Mid-autumn Festival' on 12th September for LHT tenants at Stanley Terrace funded by LHT. We also provided Chinese refreshment and moon cakes, the traditional food for Mid-Autumn Festival. Approximately 30 LHT tenants mainly from Stanley Terrace and Friendship House, visitors and staff attended the event and gave great feedback for the event. Most tenants were Chinese elderly people.
We organized Autumn Chinese Cultural Event on 8th November 2014 at Lark Lane Community Centre funded by Community Development Fund 'Community First' initiative and sponsored by Lycamobile UK. We had one-hour performances in Chinese dance, music, singing and Tai Chi and workshops in Chinese dance, Flash mob and Willow Pattern Art. We also had stalls of Chinese food, Moon cakes tasting Henna and jewellery. We had
about 100 people in and out on the day and received enthusiastic feedback.
We
achieved to introduce other Chinese traditional festivals through the
year as well as Chinese New Year and raised the profile of the breadth,
depth and richness of Chinese culture within the St Michaels'
neighbourhood. We delivered an eclectic and quality new Chinese cultural
programme and more diverse activities than last time including singing,
Flash mob, Tai chi, moon cakes tasting. The day engaged people of different ages and
backgrounds, who gave very positive feedback. Audience gained deeper
understanding and appreciation of Chinese traditions, arts and culture.
We also had people travelling from further afield, like London and
Birmingham to the area for the event. People enjoyed themselves in
various activities. The event provided opportunities for different
communities to interact with each other.
What Could Be Improved?
Unfortunately
we did not have as many as people attending the event that we expected, even though we pushed more in terms
of marketing this time, like wider distribution of posters and flyers,
more publicity online including twitter, Facebook, linked in, Weibo
(Chinese twitter) and Wechat, more assist in marketing from Lark Lane
Guide, Liverpool Days Out, and even on BBC Radio Merseyside, the
attendance was much lower than the event we did at the same place in
January funded by Community First, for which we had about 300 people.
The reasons behind it could be: 1. It was not round the Chinese New
Year period and people may not pay much attention to Chinese cultural
events outside Chinese New Year. However, we aim to challenge that and
will continue to do so. 2. There was a big game between Liverpool
and Chelsea at the same time as the event, which attracted a lot of
citizens in the city who could not make our event instead and also
affected the traffic in town for people to come to the event.
So next
time, we will check the event calendar to make sure our event is
clashing with any other major events or matches in the city.
Thank you very much to all the artists, staff, volunteers and stall owners for taking part in the event, to who came to the event and support us, to the venue's support, and of course the funder and sponsor.
