Learning To Fly

Learning to Fly is a new mixed media animated short from Winding Snake Productions.

The project, funded by Arts Council of Wales, First Campus at the University of South Wales and Ffilm Cymru Wales, saw young people from Tir-y-Berth Primary School in Caerphilly collaborate with teens from Abertillery Comprehensive School in Blaenau Gwent to write a new fairy tale and produce a film.

The film uses a set, made from a humble door frame. It was transformed into a mosaic world, featuring marbles, glass and nails. The mosaic work was masterminded by Newport artist Stephanie Roberts who worked directly with the children, and the outcome is a beautiful landscape made vivid and animated by the raw materials.

Celebrated Welsh storyteller Daniel Morden, and the widely renowned poet Mab Jones helped in the pre-production stages of Learning to Fly by working with the groups to develop characters, the importance of stories and narrative structure.

Along with delivering workshops with the school pupils, the team at Winding Snake also developed a programme of CPD for teaching staff at both schools which proved very popular. English and Media teacher, David James from Abertillery Comprehensive said “teaching is a fantastic profession, and it was great to be given the chance to learn a new skill to use in my practice, even though it took me far, very far, out of my comfort zone”.