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SENSORY OPERA
PROJECT

Express Yourself Sensory Opera    //2021-2022

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A brand new opera about exploring the city with sensory visual art and materials that is written to be inclusive of the voices of children with PMLD (profound and multiple learning disabilities)

I am grateful to be in receipt of Arts Council funding to write this piece and am equally grateful to the staff, children and families of Cherry Garden School for making it happen.

Here is a documentary about the making of the project so far, starring pupils from Cherry Garden School in Peckham, London. Alongside a professionally recorded score, the opera uses sensory materials and intensive interaction to make it immersive and inclusive for children with PMLD. Intensive interaction is where a person's sounds, gestures and breathing are copied by a communication partner to enable access the fundamentals of communication. The call and response quality of the interaction is innately musical and recorded interactions with the children formed the very starting point of the whole opera.

ORIGINAL COMPOSITION Geoffa Fells

VIDEO Jen Pearcy-Edwards

Part 2 of the Sensory Opera showing the children's shadows in the immersive projections with the professionally recorded and mixed score.

Thank you to the staff, children and families of Cherry Garden School, Paul Reynolds for mixing the track, Bob Payne for collaboratively writing the story and the musicians for recording the score so beautifully -

Rosanna Ter-Berg, flute

Chris Pott, percussion

Bob Payne, tuba

Paul reynolds, bass guitar

Kate Halsall, piano

Alan Scott, narrator

ORIGINAL COMPOSITION Geoffa Fells

VIDEO Geoffa Fells

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