Free For All at Uphill school, Weston Super Mare

With a gap in the diary at the beginning of our Exeter Cathedral week we managed a slight detour to Weston Super Mare and took Free For All to Uphill primary school. Having set up our standard parachute flanked by our English and African puppets, the children started to file in one by one. In all we worked with 90 children in quite a tight space, so that when we came to perform, with an audience of parents and teachers, they had to fit spaghetti like around the outside. This didn't however mean an uphill struggle! (pardon the pun). The children performed with both energy and passion and in a more confined space there was an intimacy to the production which can be lost in a cathedral. It was also quite pointed performing Free For All on the banks of the Severn estuary, as 200 years ago slave ships used in the midle passage, would have set off from Bristol and passed Uphill village on their way to West Africa. Thank you to all the teachers who supervised especially the two who operated Harold our puppet and for Geoff, a former CMS mission partner, for his support and photography. (which will be displayed in due course)