9:37am Wednesday 8th March 2006
By Charlie Stong
IT IS Hammertime with two educational projects based around West Ham FC, thanks to a £75,000 lottery grant.
A play about the football club called Up the Hammers is being created by 30 youngsters and will be performed at the Theatre Royal, Stratford.
At the same time local volunteers are set to document the history of the club at the West Ham United Learning Zone in Upton Park in a year-long project called Building Bubbles.
Anna Chapman, centre manager for the Learning Zone, said: "We are very excited to be able to make West Ham United FC even more accessible to the local community and bring many diverse parts of the population together to engage in some fascinating projects investigating the shared heritage.
"This project will directly benefit approximately 1,500 participants and will hopefully inspire many more to become involved in heritage activity in the future."
Named after the club's official anthem I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, Building Bubbles will collect recorded reminiscences, literature, photography, poetry and animation.
West Ham's terrace chants and fans' fashion trends over the past century are due to be studied and reports from newspapers in the 1960s and interviews with former players will be collected.
Then all the material will be handed to students from NewVIC, Newham's sixth form college, who will create a DVD and education pack for future use by local schools.
The youngsters who create Up the Hammers, which will be based on their research into the club's history, will also produced an educational resource pack for schools in the borough.
Head of the Theatre Royal's education department, Jan Sharkey Dodds, said: "We are very exited about this venture.
"The idea for a new football play came directly from young people themselves. Our goal - forgive the pun - is to share the research findings on our stage in August with our community and inspire them to celebrate their own heritage through a play."
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