Hackney Pirates Are Great… Because they ARRRRRRRRRR!

27th August 2010

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… and for a million other reasons, as I found out tonight at the Hackney Pirates summer pilot party.

The evening was the definition of a celebration. Kids sang their own songs (in English and Spanish,) read plays, stories and graphic novels and showed off recorded news reports (the spontaneously combusting turtles were a particular highlight.)

So – whilst my last post was about the academic side of learning and how not all learning HAS to be through fun activities, this project showed another side of what learning can look like.

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Hackney Pirates involved an impressively diverse group of children and young people working through a series of themed weeks. Each led to real, concrete products which the young people showed off and sold with unbelievable enthusiasm. Learners selling what they produced through their learning/learned by producing: This is social enterprise. This is learning. This is fun.

You’ll be hearing more about Hackney Pirates from me soon.

In the meantime, checkout www.hackneypirates.org or follow @hackneypirates on Twitter.

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Excitingly for me, the evening saw filming begin on a series of short films that I’ll be producing with my new associate Eleanor Barnes. They’ll tell the story of a cross-section of the small, education focused, social enterprises and community projects that I work with. For more information email [email protected].

Watch this space!
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