Firstly, let me share the trailer. If you love Dora as much as H does, then this is going to be right up your street.

Dora on the stage! She’s coming to London for three weeks in late August to early September, as well as some dates in Blackpool – and we’ll be reviewing the show! (which we’re extremely excited about, by the way)

London’s show is at the Apollo Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, and runs from the 28th August to the 16th September 2012, whereas Blackpool is the 10th August to 26th August. There’s also a proper tour planned for 2013 – dates to be announced shortly.

Dora the Explorer fans will delight in this two act , song and dance spectacular that invites them to think, sing and play along. Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer LIVE! is designed to teach kids to explore, communicate, overcome obstacles, solve puzzles and discover a diverse and exciting world…all while having a lot of fun!

Everyone’s favourite explorer is embarking on a LIVE musical adventure in London’s West End! In Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer LIVE! Search for the City of Lost Toys, Dora has lost her teddy bear Osito, and the search is on to retrieve him!

With the help of the audience, Map, Backpack, Boots, Diego and their courageous friends, Dora uses her map-reading, counting, musical and language skills to successfully pass through the number pyramid and the mixed-up jungle to reach the City of Lost Toys. But watch out – you never know what that sneaky fox Swiper might be up to along the way!

Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer LIVE! Search for the City of Lost Toys 
Apollo Theatre – West End

Dates: 28 August – 16 September 2012
Performances : Monday – Sunday 10.30am/1.00pm/3.30pm*
*Please see full performance schedule on the website for dates with no 3.30pm performances
Ticket prices: £13.00, £18.00, £25.00 (premium)
Prices include a 50p restoration levy

Address: Apollo Theatre, 31 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W1D 7ES
Box Office: 0844 412 4658
Website:
www.ticketmaster.co.uk
www.nimaxtheatres.com
www.nickjr.co.uk/

Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer LIVE! Search for the City of Lost Toys 
Globe Theatre, Blackpool Pleasure Beach

Dates: 10 August – 20 August 2012
Performances: Monday – Sunday 10.30am/1.00pm
Ticket prices: £12, £14, £17 (£2 off for children) £50 family ticket

Address: Globe Theatre, Pleasure Beach Blackpool, 525 Ocean Boulevard,
Blackpool, Lancashire, FY4 1EZ
Box Office: 0871 222 9090
Website: www.pleasurebeachresort.com

The Help Dora Help campaign is back – though you don’t have long to register (only two weeks now)! Help Dora Help is a campaign to bring exploration to life in nurseries and pre-schools across the UK. It’s supported by The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts.

What do you get?
All nurseries and preschool that apply will get a free activity pack featuring educational activity resources. In addition, nurseries will also have an opportunity to apply for an award of £20,000. The pack follows the Early Years Foundation Stage development goals and contains six activity session plans that provide stimulating learning themes with Dora The Explorer. The themes this year are Cooking, Sports Day, Fairy Tales, Animals, Seaside and Music.

How do you do it?
Registration is open at nickjr.co.uk/helpdorahelp for nurseries to apply for a pack – and they’ve got until the 22nd July to work through the activities and get the application together for the £20,000 award.

What happens next?
Once this is done, there’s a panel which includes Helena Dowling from Nick Jr’s ‘Wake Up World’, some Nick Jr representatives, plus partners from The Prince’s Foundation, Dora Magazine and Chad Valley who will choose five finalists. Then the voting goes to the public – and the favourite is awarded the £20,000!

Each of the five finalists will get learning equipment from Chad Valley AND a visit from Dora the Explorer, as well as being filmed and featured on Nick Jr.

We were lucky to get to ask Helena some questions about Help Dora Help, as well as a few questions we’ve often wondered about her work on Nick Jr and Wake Up World – read on!

The Help Dora Help campaign is huge – by being involved, what do you think makes it work so well? Is it down to Dora being such a great character, or is it more than that?

You’re absolutely right! Help Dora Help is a brilliant campaign as the award fund could make a huge difference to the nursery it is awarded to. Not only that, all the nurseries that apply will receive an activity pack and so children all over the UK and Ireland can be a part of the fun throughout the year.

Dora is a fantastic character and children love her. I think she is great as she is a very positive role model. She is very friendly and gently allows her friends to complete tasks for her and she doesn’t even get angry at Swiper, the cheeky fox who steals things from her. The show facilitates active learning by encouraging children to join in with her by counting or playing along with the games. She also encourages and teaches Spanish too which is great. I know from meeting children that took part in the campaign last year that kids absolutely love her and love the campaign. They were very enthusiastic when taking part in the creative task, using their imaginations and working together to produce something colourful and fun that could help themselves, their classmates and nursery.

I think it’s a fantastic campaign, and seeing how my daughter picked up on Dora so quickly and how it’s one of her favourite shows now, that has to be a good thing.

How much fun do you have doing what you do on Nick Jr.? Do you have trouble keeping a straight face on times when you’re sat with say, Peppa Pig in the studio, or do you take the surreality of it all in your stride?

I absolutely love it, we have a fantastic team of people at Nick Jr. that provide brilliant ideas when we are filming and I can honestly say being a childrens’ TV presenter is one of the best jobs in the world! I do get the giggles often actually but everyone seems to be fine with it!

You’ve done some episodes with The Bopps – how fun was it, as it looks like you were having a good laugh!

It was great fun! They are a couple of very funny and entertaining guys and we had a blast filming. They are not that far removed from their characters funnily enough and were often winding me with up practical jokes like hiding my shoes or telling me stories! It was great to do some slapstick style old school too, and the whole process from rehearsal to filming was a great one.

If you were to have your ideal guest on Nick Jr., who would it be?

My ideal guest would probably be Arnie from the bedtime worms, He is soo nice to chat to and I think he could help me in the garden with my flowers.

If you could sing a song from any Nick Jr. programme, what would you go for?

I love singing the Wake up World song that we created about Dora and all of her friends.

What programmes did you grow up with, and what do you think of the programmes we have these days? I feel like we’re learning so much more from them now than in the past.

I grew up with Saved by the Bell, Rugrats, Playdays and the CBBC broom cupboard. I think programming is much more advanced now and you’re right, they do facilitate active learning and imaginative play.  I know we work hard to make and air quality childrens’ programming that children love and that works with the rhythms of their day from wake up to bedtime. At Nickelodeon we are constantly researching how families go through their day, watch TV play and gave fun and put all of that into and creating a great Nick Jr. line up.

Finally, what kinds of things will you be looking out for with the Help Dora Help campaign on applications? 

We will be looking out for entries where the children and the staff have used their imagination. That will come through in the creative part of the entry, the maps. We are also on the look out for applications where the nursery has shown how best the award could be used to benefit their surroundings or educational offering. It is also great when you can see that the whole community is behind their application like with hope Nursery in Belfast last year.

Thank you Helena for answering! Also, thankyou Kate & Maxine at Nick Jr for setting this up for us.

About Nick Jr. UK:

Nick Jr. is the number one commercial pre-school TV channel. Launched by Nickelodeon UK in 1999, it was the world’s first channel dedicated to pre-school children and broadcasts hit shows including Dora the Explorer, Peppa Pig, Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom, Max and Ruby and Humf. In 2009 it won BAFTA children’s channel of the year. With its sister channel Nick Jr. 2, it is the most popular commercial pre-school entertainment brand in cable and satellite homes.

Launched in 1993, Nickelodeon UK comprises seven dedicated award-winning entertainment channels for kids aged 2-12 and is a joint venture between MTV and BSkyB Networks. The Nickelodeon Network is a top performing commercial kids TV network in the UK and the Nickelodeon channels are available in over 14 million cable and satellite homes.

About The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts:

The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts is an educational charity which champions the power of the arts to transform and enrich the lives of disadvantaged children across the UK. The charity’s projects have helped to create long-term partnerships between arts organisations and their local schools. Two core programmes, Start and Quests both highlight the potential of learning outside the classroom, enabling children to visit their local cultural venue to work with professional artists, and then developing this experience through class-based projects and activities. Since 2006 the charity has worked with over 100,000 children and hopes to substantially increase this figure in the next few years. For more info please visit www.childrenandarts.org.uk

We like to think of ourselves as a fairly crafty kind of house, but do need all the help we can from time to time with ideas – and this last week we’ve had two revelations – we didn’t realise we have the Disney Junior TV channel, and we didn’t realise Art Attack is back! However, we do now, so everything is calm and good again.

I remember the programme from way back in the 1990s, and it’s since been revived and happily lives on Disney Junior – and has a new presenter in Lloyd Warbey.

Art Attack have put together a video, and perfectly for us right now, it’s a pirate theme, how to make a sword and how to pretend to be a pirate, based on the show Jake and the Neverland Pirates

In this second series of Art Attack, old favourites like the Big Art Attacks (we saw one today which was a fantastic cricketer one!), where a picture is made on a huge scale, you can never quite work out what it is until you get to the end and it all makes perfect sense (and is really good too).

There’ll also be some Disney themed ‘makes’ and regular artistic segments which include – Main Make where Lloyd shows the ‘Big Make’ which has more detail such as puppets and secret treasure boxes in different shapes – Art Technique will describe a technique that kids can use to apply to pictures like making a wood effect on a sign or tree, using tape to make a curly head or turning pictures ‘spooky’ – Simple Art is similar to Main Make, but simpler – with fewer stages but some fun ideas.

Read on for an interview with Lloyd –

Hi Lloyd! Let’s step back in time… How did you get involved with Art Attack in the beginning? 

There was an initial round of auditions. The producers looked at many showreels and then they came across mine which mainly focused on children’s TV as that’s my area. I then got a phone call that they wanted to see me. During the audition I had to learn a script, did some screen tests and then got involved with a ‘make’. It was really exciting to learn that I had got the role as presenter of Art Attack!

How tough were the auditions?

My background is in acting so I actually really enjoy the audition process! And this being my dream job I showed them how much fun I wanted to have with the show, and how enthusiastic I was about art. Part of the audition took place in the studio and was so much fun, it felt very natural and I really enjoyed showcasing my arty skills.

Did you have to show off your artistic skills at the auditions?

Yes, all the scripts had ‘makes’ that we had to demonstrate. I chose to stand out by making my ‘makes’ beforehand to show everyone how passionate I was about art. In the audition process I made a really fun finger puppet out of a sponge and washing up gloves!

Is it a dream come true to be an Art Attack presenter? 

It certainly is! From a young age I’ve always performed on stage, and then when I was a bit older I discovered a passion for children’s TV. So, as you can imagine, when I heard about Art Attack I was over the moon – a dream job where I can use my creative skills and passion for all things arty. How cool is that?!

What do you think of the show’s success? 

I love that the show is still on TV and that it’s so successful. It allows children to explore their ideas, be creative and get inspired. Now a new generation is watching the show and being passionate about art as I was when I first saw the show as a youngster. It’s great to see such passion for art among a new generation.

Have you always been a huge fan of Disney? 

Come on, who doesn’t love Disney?! I remember my first tape cassette was of Aladdin. My mum got it for me after I saw the film. That’s where it all started, that’s where all the magic began for me. And my love for Disney is even more so now as the presenter of Art Attack, I’m having so much fun.

Who is your favourite Disney character?

That’s a hard one as there are so many favourite Disney characters. But if I was to pick one it would have to be Abu the monkey who hangs around with Aladdin – he’s a bit cheeky, just like me!

What’s in store for fans in the second series of Art Attack?

I like to think that the show is bigger and better. There’s plenty of new localised content, and I’m hoping to be inviting audiences to interact with the show like never before. I’ll be demonstrating step by step instructions and creating different work of arts and techniques using day-to-day materials.  It doesn’t matter what age you are, you’ll be inspired by the new series!

What makes the new series stand out? 

In the new series of Art Attack, we have more Disney themed ‘makes’ making it fun and new for kids using characters that they can all relate to. One of them is a photo frame inspired by the character Jasmine. Another is a sword inspired by Jake and the Never Land Pirates. With the Disney themed ‘makes’, children will have the chance to be inspired by the characters, and pretend to be them, which will make the show even more fun.

What’s new in the show?

I’m new! I’ll hopefully be inspiring a new generation to get creative and express themselves through art. Lots of the content will be available on disneyjunior.co.uk/artattack, where children can be creative and have a go.

There are three segments to the show. The first segment is the main ‘make’ – this will be a big ‘make’ made more detailed. The second segment – art technique – will teach you to apply a technique to a picture to make it stand out even more. And finally, the last segment is all about simple art – these will have fewer steps and will be easy to make art.

With all the different steps you’re given the opportunity to make something there and then. With the big ‘makes’ you have more steps and time to go away and gather the materials, then to have fun with your parent or guardian to create something amazing.

What do you like about art? 

I absolutely love art. It gives you the opportunity to be creative and express yourself in your own way. It also gives you the opportunity to have loads of fun and be inspired along the way!

How arty are you in real life? 

I’m very arty, I love painting and being creative. I’m always encouraging my friends to be creative in their day-to-day lives by, for example, making their own greeting cards. I’m very lucky that I get a chance to teach children at a school too so this gives me a great opportunity to engage with a new generation and inspire children to be creative.

When was the last time you created some art away from Art Attack?

You’ll always catch me doodling throughout the day! I was actually away with friends and their kids recently and I made a funky paper aeroplane and a really cool seagull picture using pens which was great because we were by the seaside.

When did you first discover you were good at art? 

I guess I always knew but it really came to me in secondary school. I used to spend my lunchtime in the art room making things out of wood and other materials. My teachers always encouraged me to express myself; be interested in things and get creative. They always encouraged my art and creativity at school which was great.

What’s your favourite colour?

That’s a hard one! I love red and green. But I’ll have to go for red as it’s such a bright, happy colour.

Who’s your favourite artist?

There are many out there but I would have to say Vincent Van Gogh. The Sunflowers and The Starry Night pictures are some of my favourite art works. I did a lot of copies of those paintings at school and they are some of my first memories of learning art. I was really inspired by Vincent’s use of oils and textures to create these amazing, inspiring pieces of art.

What’s your favourite art creation from the show? 

I really enjoyed the stretchy rap artist – a character we made in the show. It works by having stretchy material from its arms and legs that you attach to your hands and feet which means that you can have a lot of fun dancing with your character! The other creation we made that I really like is the bird puppet – it’s made out of egg box cartons using string which means you can bring the bird to life.

What’s been your most embarrassing moment on the set of Art Attack? 

Thankfully there have not been many! One that I can remember was getting through a link for the big ‘make’. You have to do it in a continuous shot and I managed to get through the demonstration in one go. I got to the very end but I couldn’t remember what to say! Everyone on set started to laugh. It was really embarrassing, but a lot of fun.

Art Attack at Disney Junior
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Catch new episodes of Art Attack every weekend at 10.35am on Disney Junior.