Recapping 2014

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and holidays and are now enjoying the new year. So much happened last year, 

We did our pantomime

 TAFE students held an event at the garden. 

And we even had a mud stomp, made pizza's and enjoyed Stir it up with the 2528 Project

2014 was a great year for Barrack Heights Community Garden and it's looking like 2015 is looking just as good. 

Shall keep you posted :)

Not Long Now

It's amazing how time flies. It only seems like a recent memory when Darren, Amanda and myself armed with coffees sat at the Lake Foreshore filling out a form and discussing a potential pantomime at the community garden.

Well, that time has nearly arrived and the anticipation and excitement has and is building up. We made it in the local Lake Times and even Costa had awesome stuff to say about the project

"Absolutely chuffed to be linked into a post about the Barrack Heights Community Garden down Shellharbour way near Kiama in NSW who are putting on a pantomine with a message straight from my songbook. “Underpinning the pantomime is engaging the community to learn about sustainable living practices and healthy eating,” 

And one of the characters happens to have a very strong resemblance to a half man half hedge who 702 ABC Sydney 's Simon Marnie happen to nickname. Must say that is quite a moment to make it into a pantomine as a character . What a gee up of the highest order ...I love it.

So good on you Barrack Heights for taking the whole engagement concept beyond the traditional workshop and course environment and into the creative arts realm.. Music,art and performance. Am on the road a bit over the next month otherwise I would get down to a performance for sure. Go you gardeners......Pantominista's !!!" - Costa Georgiadis (Facebook)

Today we had a run through and we are all looking forward to next Sunday. I hope you all are too. 

This is us joining a morning with the lovely Songbirds who have agreed to be a part of our flash mob

Me and Dazz painting a huge Jackson Pollack style back drop

Check out the very creative Narelle's art work

Hard work yet fun 

And thank you so much to the lovely Lee who gave so much of herself into our project. 

Of course everybody has put so much effort into our little pantomime project and we are all looking forward to next week and to be honest, I'm looking forward to the after party.

Pantomime

A funny thing happened on the way to the garden.......

Last year Darren and I decided that doing a pantomime in the garden would be a golly good idea. At first it was like a big joke but when we thought about it, the idea seemed not so crazy.

What a great way to show-case the garden and to herald colour and diversity in the talents of our community. Why not do something a bit out there that may bring a bit of joy to people? Why not take the risk? Why not us?

It's all a bit crazy because Darren and myself have never been in a pantomime. Although I have been in a few plays and skits over the years I've never fully pursued drama in the way that I would have liked, therefore feeling quite unqualified for this adventure.

So it went like this, we got serious, filled out an application for sponsorship from council and with no guarantee of getting any money we decided to book a date in and commenced with organising a panto.

What an adventure and we didn't even have a script!! What are we doing???

As our Saturday panto meetings screamed along, we have gathered a script writer, Amanda Taylor; who took our ideas and wrote something cool, Lee Rickwood who has done a lot of hard work along the way for us and Aileen Gleeson, who really does take the best minutes.

What has amazed me about this journey is how some people say that they are not creative but when it counts comes up with brilliance, such as Narelle Pearce who came up with our Let it Go parody "Let it Grow".

By the way, if you want to be a part of the flash mob scene we have created an event on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/events/1462247340709770/

Well the good news is, that we have received sponsorship for our panto from the Shellharbour City Council and we are stoked.

There have been so many great people who have been involved and this so far has been fun

How good was this meeting........fancy pizzas

this part was fun because we got to play dress ups with the Gullibles costumes. 

And then how really cool, we got to pitch our panto at the very first Illawarra soup night at Warilla 

this is how Darren went

We didn't get the cash but it didn't matter as it was such a great night. If you get an opportunity to go to one of these I highly recommend it 

For more photo's of the soup night check out Paul Pennell Photography 

Then the coolest thing happened.....oh yeah, we got cheque from the Mayor

Then after all of that fun and adventure we finally got to read the script

Costumes are being created and friendships as well. This truly is one awesome adventure so far.

There is still time to put your hand up and be involved. We are not experts and may seem out of our depth but we decided to just give it a go and I am glad we did.