Vicky is dressed as an Ancient Egyptian. She has hieroglyphs behind her, artefacts in front of her, and cameras and lights surrounding her in this behind-the-scenes shot.

Exploring Ancient Egypt with SkyVIP

Our team enjoyed an incredible high in January when Off the Page provided a virtual workshop for members of Sky’s loyalty programme — Sky VIP!

The mummy is a wooden peg wrapped wtih bandages, the shabti doll is made with red clay and the cartouche is a black oval filled with hieroglyphics on papyrus.
During the workshop children made a mummy, a shabti doll and a cartouche with heiroglyphics.

Off the Page hosted a live, one-hour workshop guiding families through three activities – mummification, making a shabti doll and writing in hieroglyphs – while exploring the mysteries of King Tutankhamun’s death. The workshop was inspired by “Legends of the Pharaohs”, which airs Mondays at 9 pm on Sky HISTORY and on demand.

Our teachers Jonathan Ward and Victoria Ryder, who portrayed priests of the Amun, hosted the virtual event. But nearly our whole team became involved in some way!

Work on the programme started last year. Our team researched and created the script, planned the activities and sourced decor. Another one of our teachers — who directs pantomimes in his spare time — even jumped in as both mentor and understudy.

Vicky and Jonathan can be seen in Egyptian clothing and make up on a split-screen for Sky VIP.
Off the Page teachers Vicky Ryder and Jonathan Ward served as hosts for virtual workshop.

We planned the event with two of our teachers as co-hosts. To keep everyone Covid-secure, we needed to build two sets in two separate locations. Living rooms became Egyptian tombs and Off the Page staff became techies. We all learned about lighting, web cams, camera angles, sound systems, etc.  It was quite the adventure!

On the day itself, hundreds of Sky VIP families took part in the virtual workshop. Many of the participants shared photos of their costumes, makeup and creations on social media using #SkyVIP.

 

Thank You

We owe many thanks to the staffers who made the project possible, as well as to:

Stretch Communications for suggesting the project and providing all the technical know-how

Moment Digital for producing the live event

Sky VIP and Sky HISTORY for having us host the workshop

If we can help you with a virtual workshop, please do not hesitate to contact us.