Bex - South London
Bex, The Champion of Play in Bexley
Bex is one of 18 Champions around the UK. She woke up in Bexley in March. Since then she has been meeting the community. She has visited Bexley, Sidcup and Erith making friends with all sorts of people in Libraries, on the Pier, in the Shopping Centre’s and High Streets.
She has also visited a number of schools, learning and inventing new games. She has visited the new play site in Danson Park. She is going to be the main character in a children’s book, and a film that tells us the story of who she has met along the way.
She will be staring in a book being written by Bexley writers in residence Steve Tasane and Rosemary Harris for the Bexley Playbuilders project. Bex will be the central character in the book and will visit the best play sites in the borough with a group of Bexley children, whilst being pursued by the evil Grumblebum!
The 1.1M Playbuilders scheme will see 25 new or redeveloped sites open in Bexley by the end of 2010 with a focus on imaginative, creative and risky play. Each play site will tell a story or relate to a local urban myth about the surrounding area and guide young people to the next new play opportunity, Bex will help to tell this story.
Rose Bruford students are closely linked to Bex and have been trained in working with her, they will now be trained in animating the new larger puppet Atom. The students will then be able to devise their own work around Atom, and take it out on visits around the borough.
Bex, The Chamipon of Play, met the festival-goers on 3 and 4 July 2010 for Bexley's big weekend festival. There awaited was also Mr. Grumblebum, who is well known in Bexley as The Enemy of Play! Grumblebum is an old fashioned Librarian who got stuck in the time when people thought that children should be seen and not heard. He is recognizable for his big hat that he wears all the time. That is, when it hasn’t been stolen or knocked off by all the kids of Bexley who love to tease him. Bex found Grumblebum’s Hat and turned it into something else. Grumblebum chased Bex to get his hat back while Bex looked for more ways of using it to create magic in her own world.
On Sunday, they both gathered teams to help them. Orchard Primary helped Mr. Grumblebum find his hat, because without it he refused to let them play any games, and he agreed that if they help him get his hat back, from then on he will be the Referee of Fair Play. Days Lane School helped Bex keep Mr.Grumblebum’s Hat because now it is where all her magic games are kept and they wanted to learn them.
Eventually, they called Atom in to assist and resolve the situation. The two teams played a game and once the game was won, Grumblebum and Bex are friends and they become the United Team of Play for Bexley. There was also a celebratory procession accompanied by The Comberton Bloco and Lola, the Champion of DetermiNation from Cambridgeshire.
www.imaginationournation.co.uk
