Be a super hero – with Club Viva at Vivacity

Whether they’re as tiny as Ant-Man or as mighty as Hulk, superheroes have fascinated us for decades – and they have never been more popular; new Thor, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Justice League, Guardians of the Galaxy and Lego Batman movies are all due for release in 2017

With half term fast approaching, who is going to save us from the forces of chaos, and be our champion in the never-ending battle against boredom? Fear not – it’s Vivacity to the rescue! Club Viva is Vivacity’s fun and unique holiday club which takes place at convenient locations across Peterborough and is specially programmed to take the pressure off parents and bring your child’s imagination to life. Tapping directly into kids’ love of superheroes, Club Viva presents an exciting week of superhero-themed activities (20-24 February) to allow your budding caped crusaders to explore the world of the costumed hero, take on super sporting challenges, tackle super arts and crafts, explore superhero science and even create a superhero all of their own…

Super-parents can get involved themselves, or – with the special activities based at Vivacity’s sport and leisure centres –leave their young ones in the safe hands of Club Viva’s expert coaches, confident that they are being entertained, inspired and kept active all week long. This year, Club Viva has expanded its activities too, with events also taking place in libraries and Peterborough Museum to help kids engage their creative muscles just as much as their physical ones.

James Parsons, comic book artist and creator of Crazy Comic Club, is just one of those whose super-skills are coming to Club Viva. We talked to him about the superhero comic workshops taking place in Peterborough’s libraries (24-25 February) – and why superheroes are so important to us all.

We all seem to love superheroes – kids especially. Why do you think that is?
Superheroes are huge in the movies now, which wasn’t true about 15 years ago. They’ve become much more prominent in mass culture in recent years, and as a modern myth they’re a great thing –good fighting against evil. But I think one attraction for kids is also to do with the recognisability of them. Spiderman is identified by a spider, and Batman by a bat, Iron Man is made of iron and Hulk is green –they’re simple and colour co-ordinated and it makes them very accessible when you’re young. Also they do things that aren’t possible, whichis always enticing and delightful! When you’re working with kids you get them creating their own superheroes.

Does that turn up some surprising things?
I keep it fairly open when I’m running superhero workshops. I don’t want to put any boundary on it. Although there are thousands of superheroes and super villains and they’re all slightly different, in away they all share similar qualities. They’re generally humanoid, they have a funky costume and some cool powers, a secret lair, a city they work in and a couple of pals or family members who they interact with. But beyond that I encourage them to think up the weirdest gadgets and powers! You wouldn’t have Batman carrying a gun that fires bogies that get bigger and bigger and then wrap you up and stick you to the wall, but we do have that kind of thing in Comic Club quite often! It’s more playful than some superhero things, which often take themselves quite seriously. But the limits are only what you can imagine. They can be anything you want them to be. You can replace an arm with something else that is way more unusual and surprising, like a giant elastic corkscrew. Or you can give the character a tail and then maybe the tail has ahead on the end of it which has its own special powers. Plus you can go anywhere in the universe to find weird kinds of logic within which your superhero can operate. I am quite silly, so my workshops tend towards the silly side! But superheroes work brilliantly for teenagers becoming a bit more aware of their responsibilities in the world, too.

Comics have been somewhat looked down upon in the past. Do you think they can actually help with literacy?
That’s probably the greatest quality of comics, that they are a fabulous way to engage children with storytelling and writing and literacy –including children who might otherwise be lacking in confidence or intimidated by a page packed with dense text. It’s so much more accessible. The first books that we’re ever given as toddlers are words and pictures together, so we learn to make sense of the world that way and are naturally inclined to put words and pictures together. Having said that, it also opens up lots of extra doors when you have speech bubbles, thought bubbles, narration, sound effects and pictures all telling part of the story. You have lots of things that you need to juggle to communicate your ideas in the clearest way possible. There is something pretty complicated about a page of a comic with all these different boxes, and you need to decide how they relate to each other. How much time has passed between one panel and the next? Is it a few moments, or is it 20,000 years? There’s always some kind of time traveling going on across a comic page, and in between the panels is where your brain does all this amazing work that you don’t even realise. And the thought bubble is a window directly into the character’s brain. You can have a character saying one thing and thinking another –and you can even have them doing a third thing in addition to those! So, it can be quite complex!

What will you be doing in Peterborough?
I’ve been coming up to Peterborough for a few years now doing various projects, including comic workshops, and have had some really good times doing it. This half term I’m going to be helping kids in Peterborough libraries with their Arts Awards. The theme of the Drawing Heroes workshop is going to be superheroes, so it will involve some practical work, designing some characters–creating some dynamic superheroes, and alter-egos, and, I suspect, some super villains with plans for world domination and superpowers and quirky sidekicks! So there will be a segment of the project which will involve looking at an artist and a cartoonist, so we will probably spend some time perusing comics and graphic novels from the library’s own shelves. Encouraging young people to engage with the library and use it is, I think, almost as important as engaging with their creativity. Libraries are amazing and we should cherish them!

What is the Arts Award?

Arts Award is a range of unique qualifications that supports anyone aged up to 25 to grow as artists and arts leaders, inspiring them to connect with and take part in the wider arts world through taking challenges in an art form – from fashion to digital art, pottery to poetry.

Offered at five different levels, young people get to: ● discover the enjoyment of creating and participating in any art form ● develop their creativity and leadership skills ● learn new skills and share them with others ● work with or experience working with creative arts professionals ● gain experience and knowledge to progress into further education and employment. Yo ung people create a portfolio to keep a record of their creative journey. Along the way they are supported by an Arts Award adviser, acting as assessor, facilitator and mentor.

To meet James in person, book your place at Drawing Heroes today! See following pages for details. To find out more visit: vivacity-peterborough.com /clubviva