The artist and the host organisation taking part in this project have received awards for the quality of their work especially in their interaction and relationship with the public. This precedent reflects the commitment of all professionals leading this project to produce a combined artistic work of the highest standards. This combined experience has been reflected in the considered long term planning and the meetings that have led to presenting this proposal. All those in the core team are proficient in planning, delivering and evaluating similar scale art projects.

‘Hunting for Fairy Tales of the Yeti’ is a process-led project by design and thus by default we will be constantly exploring new ideas through the suggestion of others, both in workshops and through physically acting out ideas in an unknown environment. The potential for the exploration of the concept of monsters, and in this case the Yeti, is one potentially ripe with suggestion and creativity. Andy has designed the workshops in such a way to explore the concepts of the unknown, the mystery and mapping adventure. The workshop plans are included in a separate document in the Teachers Cupboard and are used as chapter titles accompanying pictures in the various galleries.

The artist is very experienced in the individual delivery of innovative arts workshops where the themes are investigative and inventive. This project will introduce and begin to train the core team in the most up to date media communication skills and the use of editing and recording tools. It has the potential to improve their ICT abilities, specifically in regard to their confidence to communicate themselves through acting and documenting and conveying words, sound and vision across the internet on a global platform as part of an arts activity. It will encourage all taking part to grasp the potential that these new abilities present, for example where we can adapt and transform our own artistic legacy into new mediums.

The project team have met on a regular basis during the generation of the project over the past year and we have designed workshop plans that suit our creative disciplines. The workshops will be led by Andy whilst in the UK and Mat (Creative Villages Ltd) will manage the technological home base whilst Andy is abroad, whilst also supporting the school teachers. We will all combine to consolidate the results of the activities into a legacy to be proud of.

Andy is responsible for the introduction of what Fairy Tales are to the schools. He and the teachers will convey the ideology and inspire the children through use of published work, including the Seven Stories book based resource pack, which will provide context and an international sense of different versions of the yeti tale.

Mat will enable all the school team leaders to become confident in using the tools associated with accessing the internet web based component of the project.

The core members of the staff teams from both schools (six from each) and the artist will attend a CPD training day at the start of the project hosted by Seven Stories education team. The organisation of this event has been planned by Seven Stories and is an activity that they are experienced at presenting over many occasions in the past. This meeting has been agreed and will occur on the 20^th of September 2011.

The schools are familiar to either the host or the artist, offer reliable venues and consistent attendance for the children in familiar surroundings. Seven Stories is a unique facility and unchallenged facility for children’s books and developing their first creative skills of storytelling. In addition to this Seven Stories offers a platform for an audience that numbers in the thousands on a weekly basis. The venues straddle the North of England, reaching to the edge of Seven Stories comfortable catchment area and are within commuting distance of all taking part.

Fairy tales represent one of the most imbibing and significant genres in the history of children’s narrative storytelling and arguably the development of their imagination. They potentially enable the writer, reader and listener to elicit otherwise overtly challenging yet fundamental emotions in a safe creative world, fuelled by the creative language of images and drama. This art project seeks to build on this ancient tradition, bringing it to a new audience using the most up to date and innovative arts practices. It may even prove to be of great value in promoting the resilience and diversity of the genre.

Perhaps one of the most poignant and thought provoking themes of any fairy tale is the portrayal of the monster and how that reflects on the fears for a child, particularly those of growing into adulthood. A universal character in such stories and one easily engaged with is that of the Yeti. The Yeti symbolises to us wildness and fear, or the real danger of being attacked, if we are lost or abandoned. Yet the imaginative (or is it?) creature also presents a mixed background picture, one of being misunderstood, showing potential care or enduring enforced isolation, surely mysterious and possibly latent humanly characteristics. It is because of such firm narrative foundations, which are both inspiring and evocative to the creative mind, that the participants of Hunting for Fairy Tales of the Yeti will be confident in building a multiplicity of new adventures and discovery.

I have experienced the presence of fairy tales throughout my artistic career. I believe that they offer an extraordinary facility through which we can view the human relationship between others and the environment, especially those of the unknown. They have the ability to suspend disbelief in the existence of imaginative worlds full of the evocative potential of magic and mystery, yet through their adventures convey some of the most important guides for surviving life. They remain some of the most well known and yet little understood types of storytelling, perhaps the only type of writing that penetrated my experiences of dyslexia as a child, through their images and the cultural oral tradition that surrounded them. The inspiration for this project began a year and a half ago through working with fairy tale imagery with children as part of my work as an art psychotherapist and has evolved via research I have carried out over the past year, whilst writing and collecting fairy tales in remote parts of Turkey and across the mountains of Transylvania.

The majority of my artistic career has focussed on engaging with the developing creativity of children, encouraging their belief and enthusiasm in their artistic fluency as an equally valuable skill as any other in society. Those experiences have resulted many times in successfully presenting their visions in an adult world and prompting a reflective process that has inspired all. I see this project as developing this further through the process led and empowering activities for the children in ‘Hunting for Fairy Tales of the Yeti’.

The aims of the activity are to inspire artistic creative story telling for children in ways that are clearly outside of their experience or the remit of the English educational curriculum or through any use of existing interactive media. In addition the project will enable the artist to develop his skills in new ways and additionally the activity will consolidate the professional working relationship of the artist and host organisation building on successful projects in the past.

Optimistically the project has the potential to discover lost or marginalised fairy tales and the recorded section of the legacy could become an art work of cultural significance on an international scale.

The project will be divided into four clear sections. The venue of schools has been chosen because of the support which the institutions can offer, technologically and logistically. The participants in schools will engage through experiencing new and creative methods of inventing fairy tales, being introduced to an extensive literary and visionary archive (a contextual and literature resource has been supplied by Seven Stories), and designing the evolution and route of ‘the hunt’, all as a result of researching the theme via inspiring workshops (the workshop plans have been planned by Andy). A significant percentage of the project will use new interactive technologies where the hunt will evolve in real time through broadcasting documentary blogs sent back to the team and hunt web site at home. The students will help the artist choose where to go and what to do via uploading their response to the news reports in the magazine style live website. These exchanges will occur at the least on a weekly basis. The project is fortunate to rely on an educational contact in Nepal as an international base and it will be an additional bonus for the UK students to forge artistic and cultural exchanges with these children.

Throughout the project Seven Stories will publicise the activity and a exhibition space will be generated to display the results on site.

Hunting for Fairy Tales of the Yeti will additionally rely on the following professional artists and organisations.

• Primary Host: Seven Stories (the centre for children’s books).

• Three centres of education for children:

Old Hall Drive Primary School, Manchester.

Hylton Redhouse Primary School, Sunderland.

Children and Youth First.

~Kupondole Height, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Seven Stories and Andy have worked together successfully in the past as they were transforming themselves via acquiring a new home and becoming an inspiring children’s arts centre, a sensation that they can now be proud of.

In addition to those professionals mentioned above Andy has requested Jill Turner (High Peak Community Arts) to mentor his artistic role. HPCA is his local arts organisation and he has a professional relationship with them lasting over ten years. Andy can rely on their resource base (studios, technological support and experience/connections) and their staff team for strategic advice and supervision, as he has done in previous art projects. In addition Andy is receiving technological training from Matthew Forest (Media Villages Ltd). Matthew will support the project as the main technological support and website builder.

The UK schools have been chosen specifically because they are both practicing dynamic methodologies in child development and have had a successful working relationship with Andy or Seven Stories. The Nepalese youth project centre has been recommended by Jill for this project as a reliable contact and communications base, and additionally they have a keen interest in forging lasting partnerships with UK child centred projects.