The Happy hARTS Project
‘The Happy hARTS Project’ is a collaborative arts project between disability-led children and mainstream children at schools across England who have worked together with our team of professional artists to write, create & perform a new ‘Puppet Circus Opera’ for pre-school children in low socio- economic areas across N’ham.
STAGE 1
Mini Makers
In October 2024 we kicked off our Happy hARTS Project with free puppet making workshops called ‘Mini Makers’ for preschool children at Bullwell, St Anne’s, Hyson Green and Mansfield Libraries.
Led by the wonderful Izzy Hollis, these clever little creative kids made puppets that they performed with during our live performances in late 2024 & early 2025 in both a commercial theatrical production and as part of our free libraries tour.
STAGE 3
WRITING & COMPOSITION
This next stage of our project involved writer and disability access mentor, Duncan Townsend taking all the wild, whacky and wonderful stories that the children all wrote together and turning them into a comprehensive story that I could then turn into an opera.. After several weeks of workshopping different drafts, two new scripts: JUICEBOX & WAKE UP MR WIGGLE! were born!
Now it was my job to now compose an elaborate operatic score for both scripts. Having gotten to know so many of the children over the years (this is our 5th project at Oakfield!) and also based on our evaluation tools, I was able to create an opera that the children can all engage with and enjoy. Soon as I had finished both scores, I sent the music to our magnificent team of professionals to learn.
BONUS STAGE
During our Happy hARTS Project, we were touring our circus opera Mrs Giggly’s Magic School that we made with the young people from Oakfield School back in 2021 for our project HomePlay funded by Arts Council England.
We were able to expand our audience reach for this project by giving free tickets the children (and their families) involved in The Happy hARTS Project to our Nottingham performance where they were invited perform live on stage in Mrs Giggly’s Magic School.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
STAGE 2
SKILLS BUILDING & COLLABORATION
Led by our team of international creatives, Stage 2 of this project involved building up the skills of our young disability led students in the areas of creative writing, puppet making, costume making, singing, acting and physical theatre so that they, to the absolute best of their ability, could take part in the live performance of the Puppet Circus Opera they co-wrote with mainstream children at schools across England.
STAGE 4
THE LIVE TOUR!
After several months of preparation, it was now time for us to take our shows on the road!
We would like to extend our gratitude to Arts Council England for supporting this project and to the multitude of big hearts that made this project such a success. To Andrea McKenzie, Mathew Riley, Tom Hall and all the wonderful carers and teachers at Oakfield School, Javier Vilanero & the team at Chigwell School, to our workshops leaders and performers, to all our mentors and to City Arts Nottingham for always supporting our work and helping us to expand our network so we can continue to reach more children in underprivileged areas across the UK. We thank everyone from the bottom of our hearts and look forward to our next project together!
