Ulster Orchestra

Gulliver's Travels

In early 2005 the Ulster Orchestra undertook a major community education initiative involving some 16 schools – four schools (cross-community, ie two Catholic, two Protestant) in each of the corners of Belfast – North, South, East and West, focussing on areas of social disadvantagement.

Gulliver’s Travels provided a creative platform for the expression of ideas, and for sheer enjoyment. It was a major arts project co-ordinated by the Ulster Orchestra Education and Audience Development Officer assisted by the Orchestra’s Education and Community Outreach Assistant and was part-funded by the PRS Foundation and by the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure’s Creativity Seed Fund.

Initially, a story-teller visited all the schools to fire the children’s imagination with Jonathan Swift’s story. Over two/three months, players from the Ulster Orchestra, along with colleagues from the visual arts, led, supported, provoked, developed, interacted with the schoolchildren to encourage from them a creative response to one part of Swift’s story of Gulliver’s Travels.

Gulliver’s series of incredible adventures falls neatly into four (one for each chosen area of the city):

• The diminutive but contentious Lilliputians, who are big on military fervour and dehumanise Gulliver by using him as a weapon of war.
• The gigantic Brobdingnabs who believe in total equality and tolerance but regard Gulliver as a freak, an object of derision.
• The Laputes, scientists who live on a flying island, abuse power and seem to have lost their common sense in their quest for knowledge [Yahoos?]
• And finally the Houyhnhnms, a race of genuinely intelligent but unemotional horses whose survival is threatened by violent and irrational humans.

Gulliver provided colourful opportunities for musical, visual and dramatic (including dance) interpretations and explorations. Its four divisions offered each of the four areas a specific theme, complete in itself, but able to contribute to a presentation of all four sections in a final gather-up at the Waterfront Hall. It offered opportunities to explore aspects of understanding different cultures, the richness of diversity, perceptions of beauty, abuses of power, plus self-respect and tolerance.

There was a ‘local’ performance, in each school, a final rehearsal for everyone together in the Ulster Hall. The final Waterfront Hall performance was a mix of music, ceremony, theatre, backdrops and artworks.

Then on Friday 19 March 2004 the Waterfront Hall (dressed for the occasion with visual arts displays and Gulliver ‘happenings’ in the foyer) became the focal point for bringing everyone together for:

• A morning large-scale performance of all four segments, hosted by Wilfie Pyper.
• A foyer presentation of the school’s artwork response to the story.
• S short evening orchestral concert given by the Ulster Orchestra, conducted by André de Ridder, on the Gulliver theme and including Gulliver pieces by all four of the young composers who had acted as animateurs – Deirdre McKay, Greg Caffrey, Paul Wilson and Simon Mawhinney.

The evening concert recaptured some of those magic moments when small people meet giants; when ships are wrecked in the storm’s thunder and lightning; when Gulliver (the original weapon of mass destruction) becomes an object of derision; when people lose their reason and abuse their power
and when gentle wild animals are threatened by crazy humans.

It included music from Bizet’s Carmen along with Grieg’s In the hall of the mountain king, Elgar’s Fairies and Giants, Strauss’s Thunder & Lightening Polka and the Radetzky March, Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance, and Fucik’s Entry of the Gladiators.

Deirdre McKay’s Gulliver washes up in Lilliput was her response to Gulliver in the land of Lilliput, where the people are no bigger than Gulliver’s little finger. Funny thing is, these little people are every bit as clever – and foolish – as the people back home.

Greg Caffrey’s Quinbus flestrin, relpum scalcath was his interpretation of vastness, of gigantic size. But then, as Jonathan Swift pointed out, nothing is large or small until it is compared directly with something else.

Paul Wilson’s Island in the sky was a light-hearted response to the image of that strange flying island of Laputa which was controlled by magnetic forces and a mysterious lode-stone.

Simon Mawhinney’s Lemuel's Loanin depicted Gulliver’s emotional state as he settles into life with the intelligent horses – a life with no emotion.

The primary schools which participated in the Gulliver project were: