Suffolk Folk

Promoting Traditional Music, song and dance in the Suffolk area

Schools: Francis Firebrace

Schools Projects: Francis Firebrace

The Ryes School Organisation

15th June 2005

Francis visited the Ryes School, Kesgrave, Ipswich for a complete day. The Ryes school is a special school for young people with learning difficulties and behavioural problems. Having a very short concentration span is part of this learning difficulty, but this was not in evidence when Francis entertained them.

Francis
Firebrace The young people were waiting in the assembly room, and Francis entered with his possum cloak on and his face covered with white face paint. The young people stared aghast, he had their attention.

He gave a brief history about his ancient culture and began to tell his Aboriginal stories. The young people were spellbound. The story of the Platypus being part bird tribe, part fish tribe and part animal tribe was a particular favourite. Each tribe wanted the Platypus to join them, as they all thought they were the best, but the Platypus joined them all as no one creature was better than another. Everyone had something special to offer (including the young people at the Ryes School).

The session on Aboriginal art was intriguing, using just four colours; red, black yellow and white, all as dots. One of the young people said, "I'm not very good at art". Francis said, "That's a kangaroo. I recognised it. You must be good at art if I recognised what it was".

Francis then showed the young people some Aboriginal dancing. For this he took off his cloak and stood there in just his loin cloth. His whole body was covered in the same white paint as his face. He did the Emu

dance and then got all the girls to join in. This was followed by the Kangaroo dance, but this was men's stuff, as it was only the men who went hunting, so all the boys joined in. Francis donned a kangaroo hide and, as in a real hunt, behaved exactly like a kangaroo. The boys all copied him.

The day was nothing less than a complete success. The young people warmed to Francis and he made lots of friends. Definitely the high spot during the Arts Week 2005.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank Suffolk Folk for their contribution towards the cost of the visit. It was the deciding factor in the school being able to book Francis Firebrace on this occassion.

Thank you kindly.

Gordon Alecock

Community Liason Officer