We're going to be on the telly....!

In June the Education Centre hosted some lovely folks from SKY NEWS who popped over to Uganda and filmed our project! How exciting...! The fabulous Victoria (producer), Natasha (reporter) and Matt (cameraman) came along and spent a week with us, filming the school children at the Centre, interviewing everyone from school teachers to school kids to parents and grandparents...and they even interviewed some of the Ed Centre staff!

The "package" (as it is called, dontchyaknow) will be screened very soon on a satellite tv near you - the date will be posted as soon as we know - but it will hopefully also be available on YouTube forever thereafter.

And not only that but Matt-the-cameraman is going to use the acres of footage that he shot to make us a fundraising and information DVD to be shown to all and sundry...the date for completion of this longer DVD will be confirmed soon (no comedy extras unfortunately - not even the bit where one member of staff forgot that he had a radio mic on and went to the toilet, much to the horror of the cameraman who still had his headphones in). If you would like a copy to help fundraise for us, please let us know at the usual address (speducationcentre@gmail.com).

For a taster, here's the news crew in action...firstly, scaring the wits out of the District Education Officer who thought we were from a newspaper til we turned up with a HUGE spotlight and a massive camera!

Here they are filming at Lukolo Primary School who very nicely allowed us to follow their pupils around for a couple of days - both at the AEC and at the school. Here's the wonderfully helpful and ever-accommodating Mr Moses being interviewed outside the classroom.

Here we see an Outreach Learning session being filmed inside a classroom at Lukolo Primary.

We can't thank Victoria, Natasha and Matt enough for their interest in our project and we hope that they had a marvellous time whilst with us in Uganda....maybe they'll come back and do a follow up one day?!

Keep your eyes peeled for the date we will appear on Sky News....or contact us if you are desperate to know!

We never said thank you....for the paint job!

Alex-Dot-Com, Peter, Julius, Shariff and Bob-the-girl are wholly responsible for the excellent and funky paint job that the AEC was given...ands it's about time that we got around to saying THANK YOU to them all!

One of the most stressful decisions about the Ed Centre was what colour to paint it! Imagine that we had finally constructed this amazing building only to then ruin it by covering it in a hideous design... after many hours spent staring at the building and failing to come up with a suitable idea we decided to enlist some professional help! Luckily 'Dot Com' was on hand to save the day. He used his artistic eye to create some amazing patterns (based on New York graffiti art) and together with his trusty sidekicks (Peter, Julius and Shariff) turned the Ed Centre from whitewashed drabness into the funky palace we have today!

Here we see Alex a-top some screamingly unsafe African scaffolding whilst he paints the Soft Power logo on the tower...

And here we have Shariff, Julius (with a sun-screen cardboard box hat) and Peter putting the finishing touches to the back of the building...

Then along came Bob-the-girl and her artistic eye (and hands) who managed to paint the Nile onto the side of the building...from source (Uganda) to sea (Egypt). An incredible mural but also an educational and amazing piece of art! We all know that geographically the Nile flows south to north but for the purposes of the Ed Centre Bob turned it on its side and now it flows along the building west-to-east (next time, she asked us to build a 20m high structure instead of a 2om long one). Here she is in action back in March, getting the building ready for the community open day....

And here we have the beginning of the mural where we can see Tanzania (yellow), Uganda(pink) and Kenya (purple). It's not only to-scale but it looks ace!

HUGE thanks to all of them for their hard work, paint-covered clothes, ideas, colour schemes, artistry and miracle working....the place looks great!

Dramarama.....!

On Friday 11th May 2007 the Amagezi Centre Theatre Department held an inaugral Drama & Theatre Show in the Centre.

Robert Matovu (The Ed Centre's 'Theatre Man') and Penny Shoubridge (a long-term volunteer with special interest in theatre) worked incredibly hard over a number of weeks with a large group of budding local actors, actresses, singers, dancers, musicians and dramatists to produce a massively successful (if a little stressful) evening! Here are Robert (in red) and Penny (in green) prior to the event (with Silagi in the back dressed in yellow and a stranger at the front....answers on a postcard if anyone knows this man!).

As this event was really the first theatre event to have taken place for the local community Robert and Penny were unsure of the interest local people would have and if they would even come along.....but as you can see from the photo below, the only problem with attendance was fitting everyone into the theatre!

In fact, it was so packed that people were relegated to watching through the windows!

It is not every theatre in the world that can boast an evening with such variety...we had a Ugandan version of Macbeth mixed in with some hip-hop together with traditional drumming & dancing and much, much more!

It was a superb event and a real success for the Education Centre so big, huge thanks to Robert, Penny, the AEC staff who helped corral the crowd and all the local artists for their hard work and enthusiasm!