This project proposal has grown out of a series of individual collaborations with schools, festivals and other arts providers. The main driving force has been a four-year programme with Uckfield festival, Uckfield Community Technology College (UCTC) and its partner school in Kumasi Ghana. This programme was funded by a hotch-potch of sources hung around a core contribution from an Uckfield festival arts council grant The first year of this process saw us place a two week combined arts residency to work with the whole of the schools year 9 students (250 students). This residency allowed students to choose a variety of disciplines and involved teachers from art music and technology. Subsequent years then built on this foundation by working with smaller groups of art music and technology students feeding directly into the curriculum. The last year of the programme saw us broker collaboration with Kinetika a London based “pure” carnival group and winning a category in the Notting Hill Carnival. Same sky also obtained additional funding to make two visits to the Ghanaian school with artists, students and teachers to produce an African carnival in Kumasi. In the final phase of the programme we saw an after-school carnival club established at UCTC called Spiritus and now an after-school drumming group. This school is now providing the model and the champions (teachers) and young leaders (students) for us to open up the process. Armed with these champions we are now seeking funding to develop a full touring schools project. We will work with the three schools where we have several years of experience and add five new schools. These seven school carnival groups will make exchange visits and perform at corresponding local festivals. Al;l the groups will finally roll out together at Thames Festival. Its difficult to overempahsise the benefits that successful teenage engagement can have in these smaller local community festivals and Melas. The involvement helps counter local perceptions of bored youth and helps place these community schools at the heart and soul of their actual communities. “LOCO-MOTION” pulls together all this ground work to produce an exiting touring carnival project that builds continuing links with the students and their establishments. Although a stand alone project we hope that it can also work as a build a longer and even more structured programme of secondary school work where we can bring a range of professional artists, designers and makers to produce a south east schools parade network. Offsted inspections at Uckfield have already identified the strength, depth, and uniqueness of the schools cllaboration with a proffesional arts company and we see this as a goal for all these schools and for our community arts sector.