St. Joseph's pupils take their curtain call

Last year the Grand Opera House was awarded funding from the Arts & Business Reach investment programme to run a community scheme in conjunction with its pantomime partner, firmus energy.

The end result, ‘Watts Up’, aimed at Key Stage 2 children, started off with a competition offering six lucky schools the chance to win a personal interactive backstage tour of the Grand Opera House and its outstanding Matcham Auditorium, new Baby Grand studio theatre space and dressing rooms, exclusively lead by its very own stage and lighting crew!

Renowned for bringing top class productions such as Miss Saigon and most recently, The Sound of Music to our shores, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for school children to stand on the other side and learn first hand from some of the most talented stage and lighting crew in the UK and Ireland.

A number of primary schools were asked to design a new energy saving gadget, outlining how their invention would work.

St. Joseph’s ‘Puppy Play Centre’ was one of the lucky inventions to win one the coveted prizes at the Grand Opera House.

Not only did pupils learn how to light a stage, create atmosphere, work a sound board and discover all the tricks behind making a good show a great show, with the help of staff from firmus energy, they also found out about energy consumption in a modern working theatre and the measures the Grand Opera House takes to reduce it.

Beverly Coomber, Arts Manager from Arts & Business who funded the project added:-

“Arts & Business Northern Ireland was able to support the Grand Opera House in the development of its creative partnership with firmus energy, one of its business sponsors, through the Reach Investment Programme, funded by ACNI. Reach exists to encourage and inspire sustainable partnerships that work to maximise return on business investment, meet business objectives and deliver tangible benefits through working with the arts. Watts Up was an especially exciting project. The young people on the energy-focused, backstage tours of the Grand Opera House, were quite literally blown away by the opportunity to demonstrate their own artistic flair and creativity; encouraged to get hands-on with the technical side of the theatre and educated about the need to become energy efficient and cost efficient by the team from firmus energy. The whole experience was an unforgettable one and a win-win opportunity for both the business and arts partners.”