Who is your favourite superhero? What is their superpower and what do they use their powers for? From Superman to SuperTed, the Incredible Hulk to Mrs Incredible, superheroes have long been a source of inspiration for young people and adults alike.
And the theme of superheroes provided the springboard for a group of children and artists with disabilities at Penn Hall School in Wolverhampton to design and bring to life their own superhuman characters in what was to become an inspirational and truly multimedia project.
The Superheroes project, which was part of Penn Hall's Schools of Creativity project - in November 2010, involved children with a range of physical and sensory disabilities from across the school, from 3-year-olds in the early years unit to 19-year-olds who helped pull the different elements of the project together.
Exploring concepts of disability through enabling the children to work with artists who themselves have a disability, the school worked in partnership with disability arts organisation Working Parts who had used the school in the past to to host one-off one day training workshops for 20 artists and wanted to build on this, and who approached the school as part of their research and development of a potential model for artists training in disability arts. Artists from Working Parts and disabled-led theatre company Graeae designed an intensive week of activities around the superheroes theme for their pupils.
Jan Barley, head of Key Stage 3 at Penn Hall, explained the school had wanted to help the pupils to see themselves as artists, increasing their self-esteem and confidence and give them positive role models who themselves have disabilities.
She said: "We wanted to explore the idea a life can be led through the arts. There are so many barriers, physical and perceived barriers, and we hoped [the Superheroes project] would help the pupils overcome those barriers".
Superheroes kicked off in September 2010 with a conference for the school and creative partners to plan the work and spread the word to other organisations in the area, and the real activity began with a series of training days for the artists at the school. One of the unique features of the project was the combination of artists involved: the 15 artists, including lead artists Jenny Sealey and Caroline Cardus, who worked on the project came from a range of artistic backgrounds (from visual artists, musicians, video and installation artists, to drama practitioners and a storyteller) and had a range of disabilities and levels of experience working with young people. For those less experienced working in special needs settings this was an important opportunity to develop as practitioners, and also to work alongside some highly experienced artist educators5.. Creative Agent Roz Goddard commented of one of the artists, the staff felt it had been a privilege to work with some of the experienced artists: "It felt as if we were working with someone at the cutting edge of disability arts and that was a treat."
The project itself took place over a week at the end of November 2010 and involved children from across the school, and each class in the school had two workshops with a group of artists, working in a variety of media to develop their superhero. The work of the individual classes was collated by a group of the older pupils throughout the week.
Each group of pupils looked at the questions what does the word superhero mean to you? What are the physical characteristics of a superhero? What could a disabled superhero do? From these discussions they created their own superheroes in a range of media using the expertise of the artists with whom they worked.
One group worked with a storyteller to put together the character of their superhero and create some lyrics about the character for a song. They then worked with a musician, who brought with him a portable recording studio to help them create a high quality song about their character (listen to the completed song in the video below about their superhero ‘Granddady Who’). The completed songs, animations, films, dances and artworks were played at a whole school awards ceremony, which was the culmination of the project.
One staff member said the pupils benefited from the wide range of artists they got to work with, especially ones who also had disabilities: "It was excellent for our children to see positive role models of adults with disabilities."
A student, who was involved with the project and was involved in gathering together the work of the different groups for the celebratory end event, echoed her thoughts: "It's been really good for us students, who have been with disabled artists and it’s been fantastic to work with them".
Art teacher Rebecca Green said the experience of working with the artists had been a positive one, not only for the students but for the staff: "Working with the artists is always an expansive experience, and especially working with deaf and disabled people who were artists, and seeing how they interpreted the project."
Even months after the activities had finished, the events of the Superheroes project were still fresh in the students' minds as they recalled the project. One said: "I really enjoyed the superhero dancing. It made me feel quite lively" and another "I really I liked the feeling of acting. It was quite scary, I was quite nervous before I did it, but I felt good afterwards"
Roz Goddard said: "It made the children feel really good. They were ambassadors to the school, they were able to talk knowledgeably about previous projects, they were confident in talking about what a superhero meant for them."
The school is developing a website to share the learning from the project and have planned a sharing event to take place in Summer 2011. In addition, Penn Hall is planning to continue working with some of the artists from the Superheroes project for another Schools of Creativity project in the summer, having developed relationships with them and drawing together the elements of the school’s previous projects, working on a range of approaches for pupils with vastly differing needs. So watch the skies and watch this space!
