Have you got an idea?

Do you want to look at innovative ways of documenting?
Then contact us.

December 2011

This Saturday 10th December we are spending the day exploring Arnolfini's Museum Show Part 2 in order to create a dynamic gallery guide for young people. We're not sure what for it will take yet but may be comic book style or might even be projected on the huge wall in the foyer. Watch this space for an update.

November 2011   Boosh! exhibition in Arnolfini's cafe bar

Some of the work created as part of our Boosh! workshops, along with photographic documentation, is now on display in the WiFi area of Arnolfini's cafe bar. Come on down and have a look at the fantastic museums that children and their parents and carers created. If you can't make it down you can always visit Arnolfini's facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Arnolfini/21631134648?v=wall

October 2011    Boosh! tours and workshops at Arnolfini

I know we haven't updated for ages but since September we've been really busy preparing for our latest Arnolfini commission - to offer tours of their lastest exhibition The Museum Show to the public, followed by workshops where people were invited to make their own mini museum. The event was a great success and in the afternoon we had so many people there wasn't enough room for them all to sit down!Some wonderful mini museums were created

The plans now are to co-curate the WiFi space in the Arnolfini's cafe bar along with YAAC, Young Arnolfini's Artists' Collective, showing some of this work and documentation that we produced at The Museum Show opening.

March 2011

This month we were invited to run some documenting sessions for the City Museum and Art Gallery as part of a collaboration with Henbury School. Kamina and Dylan spent one moring at the Museum with 24 Year 10 students sharing some of our ways or working, then exploring the Museum with them. In preparation Dylan reflected on his time with the NGDs and wrote this very powerful piece...

Documentation - my journey.

Documentation isn't words on a page. It isn't a sketch or a recording. It's your imagination. Only your limit is stopping you from running wild with a pencil, setting yourself free with a pen or capturing the view that you want with a camera. That's what I've learnt. That's what everyone should know. Through my time with the NGDs I have opened myself up to more and more of the world around me, and more and more ideas and ways to express my own feelings on what's around me. Documenting isn't about what's there, it's about why you think it's there, and what you think it is; what you want it to be. There's no leash on expression, and there's no leash on documentation. That's what I've learnt.

Documentation is an art, and art is freedom, the most abstract form of expression.

Latest Update -February 2011 

Hey guys, we're back after a break. We're back, with new ideas, new ambitions, and new documentors! We've added some fresh blood into the group, and have been meeting once or twice a month to discuss our new plan, to get voices heard around the city; issues that we feel need to be sorted, on not only on a small scale with young people, but possibly internationally. We want to be able to make a change, and influence others to help us along the way. We have several ideas, beginning with the nearby area. We aim to get ourselves known by advertising our views of the world around us. We aren't trying to change the world, but basically we want to enable young people to have a voice, and we want to lead the way in this motion. We want to free the voices and opinions of people throughout the city on matters that do matter to us, the people of Bristol. We are back, and we are ready to make a change. We are currently showing a small piece at the Arnolfini, based around a 'live art festival' put on by Inbetweentime. This is just the start, as we have many ideas yet to come.

December 2009

New DVD

Using funding from the Youth Opportunities Fund we were able to create a new DVD purely on who we are and what we do, created by us and only us. Watch it on our Video page.

Commisions- Sustrans

We went on a number of long walks and bike rides to look at the art along the Bristol to Bath cycle path.We documented this, interviewed other young people and gave our feedback to Sustrans. They were very happy with what we gave them and made a google earth map, wrote a report and have used our work in numerous other places. See: www.sustrans.org.uk.

Egg

We went to the Egg theatre in Bath to meet another group of young people called the Press Gang. We trained them to be documentors, while learning tips from them on how to report on stage performances. It was interesting to see how other people work. 

Ashton Gate Primary School

Dylan and Makita went and trained some students from every KS2 year. They enjoyed the day and benefitted from the experience of teaching younger children.

April 2009

We've got a bit behind with updating this page so here's a quick update with more detailed info to follow:

Photography Workshop at St George's Library. NGD members Dylan, Luke and Kamina ran a really great photography workshop for 9 young people during the Easter holidays. They taught framing, composition, editing and printing and everyone went home with their own print.

The Grandad Project. Picked Image Puppet Theatre Company and writer and director Toby Hulse have commissioned us to work on their latest project that aims to develop children’s imaginative, creative and investigative skills through an innovative, interactive storytelling project using puppets.We will be training children from 3 Bristol primary schools so they can document the project.

The Heritage Project. Bristol City Council's Community Cohesion Team have asked us to train children some of the young people involved to enable them to self-evaluate the project.

More info on all of these plus more - and photos soon.

Into the New Year

We start 2009 with some great commissions. Here are 3 for starters:

Sustrans and Knowledge West have asked us to document and evaluate the public art on part of the Bristol to Bath cycle path. We start with a group ride at the end of January to see what we think of the artwork. Then we will be interviewing focus groups in February to get their thoughts about it.

Theatre Royal, Bath and The Egg want to understand why families and children from Bath don’t access live theatre at The Egg and plan to use documenting as part of this. They also want us to train The Press Gang, a group of young people who review their performances, to explore how their peers watch live theatre.

Creative Partnerships Spring School have invited the NGD's to take the role of 'observers and interviewers' of young people at the conference.Our documenting will be used in the final evaluation report.

At the Launch

Our launch was a great success with 30 people coming from all over Bristol, and Bath and Gloucester too. We had t-shirts printed with our logo on the front - and lots of good food. People came from the Theatre Royal Bath, Knowledge West and Arnolfini. We have new commissions from all 3 of these organisations happening over the next few months.

NGD launch event

On Thursday 16 October between 4.30 – 6.00pm at St George’s Library there will be an exciting experience dedicated to the work of the NGDs, a new and exciting company bringing bright ideas to young people’s minds.
You will see a live NGD appearance, young artists’ work and the new NGD website.
Light refreshments will be available so come along.

Creative Thinkers=Powerful Minds conference, 3 July ‘08

Back in July the NGDs were invited to this conference at Bath Spa University to run a workshop. This was for teachers, artists and educators who wanted to learn more about documenting. The people who came to the workshop really enjoyed it. We did a short activity with them where they documented us doing a random play, then we swapped and documented them. At the end we showed them what we had done.

While we were there we also documented the day. We watched a man called Charles Leadbeater talk about ‘the power of mass creativity’. Here’s a photo of him speaking to the audience.

This is some of the documenting I did at the start of his talk.

Later in the morning we could choose workshops to go to. I chose storytelling and went with Sandra and Kathy. Luke, Evan and Kamina went to a workshop to play with clay.

Arnolfini

Over the past four - five years the NGD’s have been in and out of the Arnolfini, an amazing place with loads of abstract exhibitions, an ideal place for documenting. Arnolfini are now using documenting across their education programme because they think it’s great.

So the Arnolfini is a really cool place and fun for all the young documentors out there.

What Was Up! - NGDs at the Odeon

Early last year the NGD’s went on a very special trip to the Odeon cinema, near the centre of Bristol. In the build up to what was a thrilling few hours, the NGD’s had been working with 2 men called Kim and Stewart.

On that memorable night the NGDs really showed people what we were all about. There was a grand entrance to start it all off, and to get the ball rolling we introduced ourselves to the massive crowd. Dylan, Kathy, Shahira, Makita, Mariama, Ryan, Mandeep, Luke and Evan.


We then put on a short play, acting out a scene on the basis of the popular ‘Michael Parkinson’ talk show, as we pretended to be famous actors for a brief moment. Then came some made up adverts, showing off made up products coming with really bad deals. Then, a live interview that really wasn’t live at all and then...it was the grand finale. All of the weeks previous to this had been worth it...it was the NGD video. 12 minutes and 36 seconds later......

Everyone gave us a standing ovation, applauding us and the video. It was a great success. We had introduced ourselves into the world (or at least Bristol) with an innovative new idea known as ‘documenting.’