Teenage Kicks was premiered on the big screen at the Phoenix on 10th April 2007 to an enthusiastic audience. The five minute film was made by the Reel Crew, the young people's film making club run by Phoenix Arts, and was funded by First Light and Crimebeat.

The resulting film looks very professional, a tribute to the hard work and patience put in by the young people. The six month project was been a partnership between the Phoenix and Soft Touch.

"Positive Spin consists of animations that groups at Soft Touch have made. They are short films that are about multicultural differences. We made our animation with a few magazines, a camera and a laptop! There were seven in our group and we got help from Soft Touch workers Sally, Harvey and Gill. It took us 10 weeks to make, it was a great experience and very educational". Jenna-Marie Forbes, Positive Spin participant

The Positive Spin project, which involved some 40 young people from Leicester, also created a series of posters around the theme of intercultural understanding and misunderstanding..

The project was picked out by the funders as being one of the best six out of the 1,000 projects in the first round of Media Box funding. It was also so well received in Leicester that the young people involved were invited to speak at a citywide community cohesion conference. Two of the animations were picked for screening at the Co-operative Young Filmmakers Festival at the National Media Centre in Bradford in October 2008.

Positive Spin was funded by a grant from Media Box.

There are 6 mp4 files to download:

Askman 1

Askman 2

Askman 3

Positive spin 1

Positive spin 2

Positive spin 3

Soft Touch won a tender from the Heritage Lottery Fund HLF) to make a film which encourages other young people to think about what heritiage is, what it means to them and how they can find out more about it. The HLF has supported many projects which encourage young people to explore and celebrate the diverse culture of the UK. The idea of the film is to get more young people applying for grants that will help to open up our heritage for everyone to enjoy.

The HLF wanted maximum involvement from young people and our proposal impressed them because of our strong track record. We worked with a core group of teenagers aged 14-16 in Leicester and visited projects in other parts of the country that had done heritage projects with young people.

We were commissioned by the University of Leicester to make a film aimed at parents and family friends to encourage them to do activities with young children to get them counting. The film showed how children learn about counting through listening, watching and doing. The 20-minute DVD shows ways to enjoy counting at home.

A group of students at Mellor Community Primary School made the animations.  All had difficulties with literacy and speaking skills and a few spoke very little English. Some of the group had also been involved in cycle training and it was decided to make a film using animation and live action on the subject of cycling. As part of this process the students wrote and recorded the dialogue for the film, as a way of improving their listening, speaking and sequential thinking skills. The film was entered into the Bike It film festival, which promotes cycling, giving the students something to aim towards and motivate them – their film won first prize!

"One benefit was around self-image, eg one child who appeared on a bike in the DVD even though she can’t ride one - her disability didn’t prevent her from being a star. She is very vulnerable and has almost no knowledge about the outside world but in the film she is cycling down the street, which she could never do in real life". Mellor School Special Needs teacher

The cycling animations were part of our Creative Partnerships programme.

We used the medium of animation to work with year 5 pupils on the topic of changing states of matter. The project was part of our Creative Partnerships programme in Mellor Community Primary School.

The students worked in groups around the theme of the changing states of matter, ie liquid to solid or solid to gas, a topic that formed part of their science lessons. They explored the changes through making animations using different techniques, eg stop frame, drawing and photography, depending on which they thought was the most appropriate for exploring and illustrating the process. They were used in the classroom to start discussions in lessons about "changes of state." The final animations were shown to the rest of the year group and then the rest of the school, on a large screen that could be viewed by parents and children.

OFF YOU GO THEN!
The playwright Joe Orton is one of
Leicester’s most celebrated sons but is little known on the Saffron Lane Estate where he was born and brought up.

Soft Touch worked with a group of young people from Saffron Lane, in partnership with Saffron Arts, to produce a DVD about Joe’s life and work, which was launched at the Leicester Comedy Festival in February.

One of the aims of the project was to celebrate Joe’s achievements and counteract the perception that if you come from Saffron Lane you are never going to get anywhere in life.

The DVD, called Off You Go Then!, talks openly about Joe’s homosexuality and in doing so hopes to undermine homophobia by presenting him and his work as something to be proud of.

The young people involved all live on Saffron Lane Estate and came to the project through their interest in drama. They knew very little about Joe Orton to begin with, but now the DVD they made is being used as an educational resource in schools and has even been seen by an American academic who is studying his life.

This year sees the 40th anniversary of Joe’s death and the Saffron Lane group’s work is being included in an exhibition about the playwright at Leicester’s New Walk Museum. A series of photographic panels accompanies the DVD and these are currently on show at the City Gallery on Granby Street, Leicester.

Sally Norman, who co-ordinated the project for Soft Touch said: “For the group from Saffron Lane, making this DVD was a major achievement and has opened up horizons. The young people did things like going down to film in London (the first trip there for some). They made friends with Joe’s sister, Leonie Orton-Barnett, who appears in the DVD, and they have spoken and performed in front of audiences on many occasions.

Now they keep talking about what they are going to do next”. Off You Go Then! was funded by a grant from the Young Roots programme
of the Heritage Lottery Fund.