Nigel Mainard (Boing), Stu Barter (Chime) and myself (Toot) had a wonderful opportunity this August having been invited to deliver a professional training programme for Korean artists and teachers as part of the ‘Arte Academy’ training programmes offered by the Korean Arts & Culture Education Service.

We delivered two separate training weeks; the first a five day course for 30 Korean artists who are working in schools and the community; the second a four day course for some 40 exceptional teachers with a wide range of experience.

Arriving after a comfortable ride and stomachs full on in-flight Bibimbap we arrived to a friendly and expectant KACES team and were introduced to one of our interpreters, Hannah, who would be with us for the duration of our stay.

It was an intense first few days beginning with the intrepid Chime in Drama Development; ‘No Stars No Scripts’. The artists were soon showing off their ability to produce high quality fully polished performances in a whirlwind of human houses and furniture, giant sea monsters and travelling machines.

The contrasting qualities of Machines and Monsters was the perfect model for me to dive into Movement Development with an introduction to Laban’s movement analysis and Boing followed up with internalising pitch and pulse with Dalcroze activities and had a hundred drums sticks flying and beating at once in a vibrant samba session later in the week.

Throughout the courses we challenged both the artists and teachers to produce holistic performance sharings that include all elements of the performing arts, including film, based on several different stimuli; pictures, paintings, objects and written text. We were continually impressed and astounded by what both the artists and teachers produced for us all to view, nothing was done by halves.

They were an exhausting but invigorating and uplifting couple of weeks for all involved. On the final day of each course we all still had enough energy for saying goodbye with hundreds of photo opportunities and final swapping of music playlists, song, story and prop ideas.

What a fantastic opportunity and wonderful time we had. We learnt so much and hope we can have this opportunity again in the future.