Fan of Rudyard Kipling? ‘Brighton Celebrates’ at Carlton Hill School for Brighton Festival 2016 – costume, set and puppet-making opportunities

Brighton Festival Children’s Parade 2016 – arts and creative volunteering roles with Carlton Hill Primary School

This is an exciting opportunity to be part of this fantastic and diverse event. For over 25 years the Children’s Parade has opened the Brighton Festival, with 5,000 local schoolchildren stepping into show-stopping costumes they have helped to design and make. Almost 80 local schools, infant to secondary, take part and enjoy a real sense of pride as their hard work turns into a vibrant procession of dance, drama and fun for the whole city to watch. Around 10,000 people come along to see the parade and be part of the largest annual children’s event in the UK.The Children’s Parade is always a fantastic event and we are very proud to be involved.

The overriding theme for this year’s parade is ‘Brighton Celebrates’ and our section has a focus on famous people who have lived in Brighton. Carlton Hill School’s famous person is the world renowned author Rudyard Kipling. Our concept for the parade is to recreate a scene from his original work, ‘The Jungle Book’. The scene we have in mind is the iconic fire scene featuring Shere Khan the tiger as the central big make, the children as animals from the jungle, carrying fire sticks and big jungle leaves. The possibilities are endless and we welcome passion and creativity.

Big Make’ Scene Planning and Making Volunteer – The big make is a structure made out of willow withies (that we provide), covered with tissue paper and painted. This role will focus on the planning and construction of the main sculpture and will be supported in its creation by teachers, parents and children.

Puppet Making Volunteer – We need to find a way to represent Rudyard Kipling and we thought maybe a large ‘puppet’ of him would be an eye-catching way to do this. This is open to interpretation and could be made from withies or other materials.

Costume Making Volunteer – The perfect opportunity to get creative with the children as animals from the Jungle book. Our original idea was to have the children all to be dressed in black, with vines and tiger faces painted however we would love a volunteer who is inspired to create some authentic animal costumes to represent key characters from the story.

General volunteers – If you don’t want to take on a whole project but would love to be involved then we would be very happy to have people taking on a general volunteering role. This would include turning up to workshops, assisting with making and decorating the willow props and of course, participating in the parade on the day.

Time commitment – dependent upon role. Various sessions throughout March and April (not during the Easter vacation).

Interested in taking part? You can view the full role details on the Vacancy and Events Service. For further details, please contact Active Student, the University’s Volunteering Service.

Image: Courteousy of Walt Disney’s ‘The Jungle Book’.