Young Entrepreneurs – Visiting Boston and Chicago

Young Entrepreneurs who had achieved excellence or self-led innovative projects in their school were invited to Boston and Chicago to explore projects set-up either ‘by’ or ‘for’ young people. With them were their deputy head, creative partnerships leader Rehana Mughal, two artists and an observer.
Each day we explored their entrepreneurial skills, played games to bring them to the foreground, and reflected on each person’s learning style, and their idiosyncratic ways of engaging new people. Everyone tried new approaches and techniques. The outcomes were that a small group of young entrepreneurs were exposed to some of the most exciting forward thinking successful businesses which engaged people from all backgrounds and cultures.
Tools of reflective practice to change knee jerk responses and open fresh confidence to communicate well resulted in improved vocabulary, better understanding of own process and increased confidence.

The Hill

An ‘Urban Eden’ to explore how we treat humans. A place to play, explore and be. Lorraine Faissal joins as community leader.  A Social Enterprise, a gallery you ride through- with some of the world’s most exciting artists.

Peter Forde’s Live Digital projection, commissioned by The Tower Bridge Gallery.

Peter was also commissioned in response to the artwork by the Shakespeare’s Theatre, to create a permanent digital artwork for the Globe Exhibition.
As visitors to the exhibition pass the entrance where there is a bust of Shakespeare, people are encouraged to stroke his cheek and see if they can feel any poetry. Secretly their action is filmed and, in the main exhibition, screened on the wall: enlarged and prominent. Visitors see as the cheek is rubbed the head glows then fills with light which then travels along the visitors arm and fills the visitor with light and words. It is a simple and very effective visually pleasing way of engaging people with Shakespeare in the exhibition and livens up the space in a gentle and charming way.

Carlos Acosta

We worked in  collaboration with  Carlos Acosta to create his most ambitious show to date: Carlos Acosta Premieres that took place at the London Coliseum. We aimed to bring the audience nearer to the dancer with a film shot at 800 frames per second.

A live 3D Video Mapping installation at Future Gallery

Simon Elliott was the creative producer of Future Menagerie, in collaboration with Shaun O’Connor of Prickimage and Mehmet Akten aka MEMO.

We created the illusion that the gallery ceiling was actually moving and becoming an extension of the visitors. Viewer’s eyes were image-captured when peeking into a small model of the gallery in the centre of the room, then projected onto the walls in real time. The whole gallery became the artwork-installation. It appeared that the real humans were the giants outside the existing gallery, in a digital virtual future. ‘Avatar’ meets ‘Gulliver’s Travels’.

We are thrilled by the possible emerging empathy, suspension of disbelief, and visceral narrative- emerging now on spanking new platforms.

“We are at a very exciting time, where, as in the early days of film, narrative took time to materialize; an emerging vocabulary for ‘video mapping’ and ‘augmented reality’ are beginning to inspire artists to engage all our senses as when film began in the 1890′s. We are at the frontier of digital imaging engaging broad audiences with exciting and complex content, extending the capabilities of film across fresh new platforms.This Menagerie of humanity serves as a remembered echo of our Future Nature.”

Simon Elliott

We explored our developing relationship with the subliminal human urges, our passions and the charm of new tools.

Shaun O’Connor from Prickimage is a VJ and video artist, resident at Fabric with WYS, & travelling London & Europe’s festivals & prime venues. Collaborating with Ahh… Arts Igniting Minds, Noise of Art, Jonny Woo & Caron Geary.

Mehmet Akten aka Memo is a visual artist, musician and interaction designer with a focus on creating emotional and memorable experiences. Using programming as his primary artist’s tool, he develops technology to create new instruments and explore alternative ways of performing visuals and sound.

English National Opera – Carlos Acosta Premieres

Simon Elliott created elements of the the vision with Carlos Acosta.

An artwork aimed to bring Carlos closer to his audience and his most ambitious show to date. A series of duets with a cyclical reflection on how we repeat ourselves in relationships.

Digital projection onto gauze, creating the illusion of the 3D setting coming out of the live performers imagination. Falling Deep Inside - A slow motion film exploring the emotion and impulse under the skin, to prompt movement.

Working with some of London’s most talented digital artists, exploring the new possibilities of projected digital image in the live-theatrical setting, including a HD film.

Falling Deep Inside – CARLOS ACOSTA PREMIERES from Ahh…Arts Igniting Minds on Vimeo.

When Simon was short-listed to create an artwork for London to celebrate  the 2012 Olympic Games: Breathing Human Into Buildings, he invited some of the world’s most brilliant artists to engage people passing on the street by animating architecture, creating the illusion that the buildings were breathing, moving and turning.

Carlos Acosta was invited to choreograph the movements of a building – he engages broad audiences and knows exactly how to deliver a visual intercourse, with attentive detail, great passion and with a broad vocabulary; he is possibly the best dancer in the world. Carlos then invited Simon to develop the work inside the theatre on his show Carlos Acosta Premiers at the ENO

Digital artists Anna Boberg, Shaun O’Connor, Somu Mohapatra and Barry Gene Murphy joined the team.

Carlos invited and featured the 25 magnificent singers of the early music, amateur- The Pegasus Choir. Bringing community to play with high end start with complex content for popular audiences.

Action Research Project asking ”Can communicable felt experience inform building design?”

Architecture of the Emotions, undertaken in partnership with Open City (formerlyLondon Open House), explored how young people ‘feel’ about buildings and how they could articulate that.

Simon Elliott conceived and then organised the 7 day project over 7 weeks, involving 30 teenagers from secondary schools in Lambeth and Southwark, between the ages of 11 & 15.

The project included the generation of a 28 minute video Architecture of the Emotions to encapsulate the outcomes.

Using tools from theatre and film to explore ‘emotive charge’, young people were facilitated to articulate their ‘felt response’ to the built environment. Broadening their vocabulary from their own senses, brought fluency, self-awareness, confidence and understanding to their interpretation of buildings and their relationships to them.

Participants invited to work with the students included Fernando Perez of IDOM (who worked on the Guggenheim in Bilbao) the writer John Constable, Julian Crouch the puppeteer and designer, plus Andrew Shoben of Greyworld- Public Artist.Shakespeare’s Globe, Southwark Council, The GLA, The Tower of London, Tate Modern and local communities.

During our work together it became very clear that the students did not feel entitled to comment on the built environment, partly due to lack of an appropriate vocabulary and also because of a lack of knowledge of what was possible in a build process.

This observation informed the foundation of Ahh…’s ongoing interest in the subject of how to empower people to comment on their ‘felt experience’ of spaces, buildings, architecture, and many arts, and how important such considerations should be in future design processes. It has also informed the process for The HILL.

The Future Gallery

In collaboration with Shaun O’Connor from Prickimage and Mehmet Akten aka Memo,Simon imagined an installation which employs our developing relationship with the human urges, our passions & the charm of new tools.

Ahh…Arts Igniting Minds hosted Lewis Barfoot, and composers Litha and Effy Efthymiou, with “The History Of The Pomegranate”.

This humorous show which combines visual theatre, live music and song to unearth the fascinatingly researched mysteries of this fecund fruit – to leave you wondering whether Eve was actually tempted by an apple in the garden of Eden, or a pomegranate…

Lewis has since developed the show further with larger venues.

‘…there is some absolutely beautiful musicianship from the supporting ensemble cast. Composed by Litha and Effy Efthymiou, solemn melodies, both masterful and chilling and reminiscent of age old Roman Catholic chants, entice us into a world where reality blurs’.
Fringe Review, London Fringe 2008

Our aim is to support and facilitate developing talent, with a view to creating content for The HILL.