The Unicorn School, Abingdon

Dancer and film maker Naomi Morris is working with pupils from the Unicorn School to translate their enthusiasm for new forms of energy into a film.

The class are in four groups and each of them are focusing on a specific energy source and creating their own forms of transport.  Not only are they designing the companies and vehicles that demonstrate these new technologies, Naomi is working with the children to choreography their inventions into dance and movement pieces.  The boys are literally physically representing solar, hydrogen and other forms and Naomi is using their images and dance pieces as the basis for a film that shows everyone how beautiful and stylish transport in the low carbon future could be.

The classroom is filled with children’s drawings and plans, photographs of the children demonstrating their ideas and they are working to the soundtrack that Naomi is putting together.  Watch out Top Gear, the Unicorn School are really showing the future of transport in creative ways !

Natalie Ford working with a Unicorn pupil.

When it came to fossil fuels, the pupils at the Unicorn School had certainly been doing their homework. They knew enough to make a movie on the subject. It was soon very apparent that many of them knew their way around a video camera too.

Their classroom had been transformed into a film set, with each of the three groups of pupils eagerly making props and writing scripts. Two of the groups were making films to explain how fossil fuels were created and how they are running out. The third group was making a film exploring various clean alternatives to fossil fuels.

Scenes included Dark Vader preventing Lego people from using the petrol pump, battery and petrol powered cars racing one another, and a Jurassic scene illustrating the extinction of the dinosaurs and the formation of fossil fuels.

By the end of the day, all that was left to do was edit the clips into fully formed movies which will premiere soon in a presentation to Naomi Morris, the arts partner who will be working with the class in April.

Children building a solar powered windmill

Natalie Ford, the Schools Outreach Manager at Science Oxford brought sheer delight to pupils at The Unicorn School in Abingdon. In this, their first science workshop in the school, Willow Class took part in a discussion on energy resources, how fossil fuels are made and learnt about alternative methods of energy generation.

Following their talks, the pupils were set the challenge of building solar powered windmills from K’nex, a task they took very seriously. In fact when it came to break time the children were desperate to stay in and carry on with their building.

In their next science workshop the pupils will be making a short film on the subject of energy and the alternatives to fossil fuels.