Charity Rosetta Life is delighted to announce the screening of their 360 film installation Room2Dream, which has been made with children all over the world to explore their idea of home. Through the eyes of young people, the 30 minute-long film takes audiences on a journey from England and Scotland to Zimbabwe, Rwanda, South Africa, India, Syria and to a pre-war Gaza. Rosetta Life have been working with children’s hospices, hospital schools and refugee centres to create the installation, involving the children with creative writing, song making and recording, shared choruses, and film making. The film has music by composer Jocelyn Pook, best known for her work on Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut, with instrumental in response to the children’s writing and some of their poems set to music; the track Golden Hour of Home from the score has been release on Spotify here.
The film will be projected inside a dome at Stanley Arts Centre to create a full 360 installation. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with those involved.
The project arose from several long-standing partnerships; over the years, Rosetta Life have been working with children across the world to create musical exchanges between hospices, connected by organisations such as Palliative Care in Humanitarian Crisis, Unicef, and the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance. In 2019, children from schools in England were joined digitally by children from across the world is a special, one-off performance of their collective poetry Dream a Difference at the Royal Albert Hall. The performance gave voice to children from all different cultures and backgrounds; Room2Dream takes this one step further and allows the children to show their surroundings and day to day lives.
A student from Prince Edward School, Harare, Zimbabwe, said “The fact that two groups of people from different parts of the world can come together to write such a creative piece of poetry amazes me. It fascinates me how total strangers are able to interact and connect so well together… It has built our confidence and exposed us to different forms of poetry to help us all become better poets.”
JS, an English Literature Teacher from Bartholomew School, Eynsham said, “The children have never before been listened to so well and having the opportunity to make links and forge bonds with other young people across the world has been life changing for our students. They have learned that their voices matter, their creativity matters, and they have been able to collaborate in a shared artwork that transcends country borders”.
Creative Director of Rosetta Life Lucinda Jarrett said, “It was a huge privilege to work with young people around the world and hear their stories of home. Each group of young people storyboarded their own experience of home to share with wider audiences: in Syria we learnt about the challenges of rebuilding a home after conflict; in Gaza we learnt about the joys of experiencing a picnic on a beach; in Uganda we learnt about music making in the refugee camps; and in South Africa we learnt about the importance of holding onto your dreams. While each context brought its own challenges, the experience of immersing yourself in these worlds is quite extraordinary.”
Rosetta Life is an arts in health innovation charity, who have 25 years of evidence based practice working with leading artists. They pioneer meaningful performances that are transformative to participants, audiences and society. Each project is a social problem-solving incubator presenting scalable solutions. Their ongoing project Stroke Odysseys has included performances: Hospital Passion Play, an opera performed by seventy performers including professional singers and a choir of twenty stroke survivors at the Victoria and Albert Museum; I Look For The Think, an online opera released during the pandemic, and touring music and dance show Stroke Odysseys. In January 2024, Rosetta Life projected an artwork Heart of Care onto public buildings, and conference event Let Silence Speak in collaboration with English National Ballet and Breathe and will be touring regionally.
Rosetta Life is raising funds to continue the project in the future: www.justgiving.com/campaign/Room2Dream
Stanley Arts is one of South London’s premiere arts and performance venues, providing their local community with a vital home for cultural expression and discovery. As a radically inclusive space they seek to foreground under-represented voices, providing artists of colour and LGBTQ+ creatives with a platform to reach out to audiences across South London and beyond.
