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
3)
Lantern
Festival / Preshow Event
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
4)
Outreach
Activities
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.
5)
Traditional
Han Chinese Cultural Show
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
6)
Show
at Museum of Liverpool
We restaged the Unity Theatre show in a smaller scale with an alteration of the cast
at Museum of Liverpool in July
7)
Show
as part of Liverpool Loves Festival
We restaged the show with an alteration and delivered calligraphy and origami workshops as part of Liverpool Loves Festival at waterfront in August
2.
Funding
and Support in kind we obtained
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.
4.
Media
Coverage
CCTV (China State TV) 1, 4, 13, BBC Radio
Merseyside, Liverpool Echo, Xin Hua Net, Oriental Outlook
5.
Alterations
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.
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.
