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Gary R
December 14th, 2009

I must get out more often

Last Wednesday was one of those rare occasions that I was allowed out from behind my desk and off into the real world. We’d been invited to take part in a Networking Day staged by Birmingham City Council. The event was billed as an opportunity for arts organisations to meet extended schools co-ordinators and other school representatives.

I have to confess I’m not exactly the first person to volunteer for these sorts of events. They can be a bit dull, and often attended by people who have been told to attend by their boss rather than wanting to be there. However, with another big event that day (Tapestry was being presented to Directors of Children’s Services on the other side of town), the job fell to me and Gavin, our administrator.

And I have to say I was really glad it did. I might have cursed the weight of our display boards once or twice as we lugged them into the foyer of Symphony Hall, but once we were set up it was clear it was going to be more than worth it. The attendees – extended schools to begin with, schools later on – were interested and enthusiastic. We had the opportunity to present a workshop on using drama and storytelling to support children with English as an Additional Language which drew a small but eager group. I had the chance to talk to lots of different people about our work, about what they needed, and about how we could help them.

But there was more. In what we call in our evaluation reports an ‘additional outcome’, myself and Gavin also had the chance to network with other companies. It’s so rare that we all come together in one place, showing our wares and getting chance to chat, seeing some old faces but a good array of new ones too. I’m sure more than one partnership was brokered that day.

All in all a really good way to spend an afternoon. I should really try and get out more often. 

To find out more about our extended schools work, you can have a look at Gangs & community cohesion, Holiday projects,  English as an Additional Language. Also our theatre-in-education tour Tapestry (Preventing Violent Extremism)  which has been mounted in out-of-school settings

Posted in Early Years, Extended schools, Infant/Key stage 1, Issue-based/PSHE, Junior/Key Stage 2, Secondary/Key Stage 3/4, The Play House | No Comments »

Cheryl S
December 2nd, 2009

Be quick, don’t waffle, and just write the darn thing….

This is my second attempt at writing a blog.  The first one, on reading it back, was too long and too relevant to that week at the beginning of November, therefore it would read as old news today.  Here I go again.

Note to self: be quick, don’t waffle, and just write the darn thing….

Here I am in the office awaiting the imminent last trip into school tomorrow with our newly devised and flawlessly written programme The Last Train, a participatory theatre-in-education piece that engages year 5 & 6 children.  I had the privilege of creating this key stage 2 programme as part of a fabulous team at The Play House;  John Flitcroft and I, who were the permanent staff involved, director Geoff Readman, writer & audio specialist Charlotte Goodwin, designers Dawn Allsopp with Emma Thompson and freelance teacher/actor Toni Midlane.

At the heart of this one and a half hour programme is the story of a 10 year old German Jewish girl Inge Gershon, from Berlin.  Prior to the beginning of the Second World War in 1938 a scheme called the Kindertransport was created to evacuate refugee children from cities across Europe. To escape the dreadful persecution at the hands of the Nazis, Inge’s family send her to a place of safety in England as part of the Kindertransport scheme.  The drama focuses on what life was like for families and particularly children at this time.  We see how the persecution or the Jewish people quickly changes a child’s life of normality to one full of fear and constraint.  Alongside Inges’ journey, the children see glimpses of a contemporary refugee who is seeking refuge in Birmingham today. 

The tour has been received incredibly well by children and teachers alike.  The themes and issues raised through the content of the drama are a useful stimulus for work around citizenship, history, religious education and PSHE.  The children after each session are bursting with a whole host of lines of enquiry from ‘What happened to Inge’? to ‘Why did Hitler hate the Jews’?  All of which can be followed up in the classroom through work with their teacher.

As the literal last train is about to leave the station, I will be sad not to be exploring the immensely stimulating material covered in this programme and will say a fond farewell to the whole host of characters I have had to portray. And what a pleasure it has been to work with Toni and her ever increasing pregnancy bump!.

I shall now look forward to a whistle stop whizz around the office doing all manner of ‘winding up before Christmas tasks’. Such as: writing a fine report for the afore mentioned The Last Train,  cleaning duties, set-auditing, attending new programme development days, eating mince pies, reading and planning for the new programme looming next term; Roll Up! Roll Up!, and washing up.  All to be completed in about 2 and a half days ‘cos I’m only a job share you know…

Happy Christmas to you all.

Cheryl Stott

p.s. New Year’s resolution number one – not to write any more blog entries unless threatened with my life.

Posted in Issue-based/PSHE, Junior/Key Stage 2, Language Alive!, Secondary/Key Stage 3/4, The Play House | No Comments »

Gary R
November 26th, 2009

Safety and the cyber-world

Cyber-bullying and online child protection is in the news at the moment with some social networking sites refusing to install the “panic button” recommended by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre. Opinions on this decision has been mixed, with The Guardian (Just one click to prevent child abuse) applauding Bebo’s decision to install the button, but The Times (A life online: just delete the cyber-bullies) questioning whether the button could address other issues, such as cyberbullying, and putting the emphasis squarely on the shoulders of parents.

Safety in the cyber-world is an issue for us on two different levels. Earlier this year we ran a project with a local school looking specifically at cyberbullying. The school had experienced some disturbing instances of bullying through email and texting, and with them we developed a project to look at these issues. Initial research sessions with year six pupils had shown that many of the children were acutely aware of what cyberbullying actually entailed. However, when probed further it became apparent that the children did not really distinguish between cyberbullying and the more general types of physical bullying or intimidation that may take place in school or other settings. To address this the project utilised masks and mask work as a way of ‘distancing’ participants from one another and exploring the anonymity provided by email and text messages. From this a peer education performance was created, with participants delivering to the rest of the school.

But we’re also wrestling with online safety from a different perspective. You might have seen from my earlier blog post (Digital potentials), we’re in the process of looking at our resources, and how to make them interactive and participative. For the first time the activities and resources we develop to support our programmes could be open to anyone online, rather than just teachers. This is certainly possible, but is it desirable? What sort of activity is appropriate? What sort of activity isn’t?  What can we put in place to make surfing safer for children and young people?

But there’s also another question. In The Times report above it references a survey by the Anti Bullying Alliance that said over half of children they consulted thought their parents needed to learn how to deal with it. How do we get to grips with a world where our children are more at home than many of us?

Posted in Issue-based/PSHE, Junior/Key Stage 2, The Play House | No Comments »

Malcolm J
November 17th, 2009

We don’t just throw this together you know…

Tapestry is currently touring schools and is our participatory theatre programme that explores violent extremism. In the story Jason, Hassan and Nazia find themselves in a derelict shop, taking cover as a protest they are involved in becomes violent. Jason and Hassan are from opposing ends of the radical spectrum with Nazia caught in the middle. (You can read more about this in the previous blog entry “We just have to figure out how to weave the strands together”.)

As we continue to tour Tapestry a lot of the young people we meet are suggesting that Jason and Hassan stop fighting, become friends, talk to one another and other people. This is great and of course good advice, but I am left wondering how that can happen as there seems to be too great a divide between them.
Thinking about this, it occurs to me that they have already started to break down the barriers, they have begun to talk, and more, they begin to understand. During their enforced time in the closed down shop they begin to share their life experiences, they begin to “live life in the others shoes” [Pupil at King Edward VI Aston]. The complexity of the situation becomes apparent and challenges the simplistic rhetoric of Peter Jeffries and Dr Farooq.

During the programme Jason and Hassan are drawn into playing out moments from each other’s lives, and in taking on roles in each others stories they begin to gain insight. They are part of the stories as they are being told but are free to contribute from their own understanding of the world. Hassan, Jason and Nazia comment on the actions of others, question, advise and challenge, just as the young people participating in Tapestry can.

As a company we are committed to using participatory drama as a tool for learning because it allows young people, and adults for that matter, to wrangle with the complexities of the real world from the safety of the story whilst at the same time being part of it.

In the story of Tapestry it is drama that enables Hassan, Jason and Nazia to begin to see the other points of view, to know how it feels from the other side, to understand the complexity of the situation and begin to see the possibility of change. In just the same way as the young people participating in Tapestry the programme begin to see different points of view, understand the complexity of the situation and to begin to see the possibility of change.

Not only does the programme stand alongside the rest of our participatory theatre programmes, it also celebrates our way of working, with the characters in the story learning through drama.

The programme has become an advocate for our way of working.

Posted in Issue-based/PSHE, Secondary/Key Stage 3/4, The Play House | No Comments »

Gary R
November 16th, 2009

Synchronicity

We always make an effort to make sure our programmes are relevant and timely. Usually this is by design. For instanceThe Last Train touring this term was timed to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Kindertransport leaving Germany.

Sometimes events overtake us though. It was with a strange sense of déjà vu that we watched the news reports in September about the riots in Birmingham city centre (here’s the BBC’s report on the incidents). We had spent the previous term devising and piloting Tapestry, our programme looking at preventing violent extremism. We’d consulted community groups, young people and police, and developed a programme following Hassan, Jason and Nazia as they shared each others stories – trapped in a deserted city centre shop during a riot.

This strange feeling of synchronicity has happened again. Today we started devising our consultation workshops for The Home Children, a tour that will bring to life the real stories of the child migrants, their families and those involved in their migration from British children’s homes to countries around the world. As I turned on my TV this morning I was moved by a woman who had been part of this migration, and in her case was sent to Australia. Her childhood had been taken away, she had grown up having been told she had no family, and had only recently discovered she had sisters living in Britain. She was on the news because the Australian Prime Minister had just issued an apology, and (we’re told) our own is about to follow suit.

It’s events like these that remind us that all the stories we explore, whether inspired by mythical, historical or contemporary sources, are relevant and resonant to the children and young people taking part.

Posted in Junior/Key Stage 2, Language Alive!, Secondary/Key Stage 3/4 | No Comments »

Juliet F
November 16th, 2009

Missing out on play?

This half term was spent with a lovely bunch of ten children making up a collective story here at The Play House.  They ranged from seven years old to eleven and brought a host of wild and interesting ideas with them. It was sometimes a struggle to keep them all entertained.  I was amazed at how much they needed to just play – with ideas, situations, the drama space and each other.

It is making me think about working on relatively short projects and how much time we can give young people to ‘play’ without adult intervention.  Good quality small group drama demands a healthy dynamic and co operation but if you’re working with a group for just a few hours they need more time to develop these skills.

I’m often talking to teachers who mention that their children seem to lack imagination and I think some have often missed out on the chance to ‘act out’ and role play ideas, situations, characters and things they have imagined and seen.  It would be great to provide older children with more opportunities to do this in school.  But how?

The Play House has talked often of creating a multi sensory environment here at The Play House for children in Key Stage 2.  We have already created one for children in the Early Years with The Selkie Girl a few years ago.  That environment was crucial for children to understand the concept of the seaside in the Selkie story.  They played in a real wooden boat, collected shells and threw sand and none of this was particularly adult led.

I wonder what it would be like to offer older children that opportunity?  What environment would it be?  Should we work with even smaller groups and allow them lots of time to explore?  How would all of this impact on the drama?

Posted in Early Years, Infant/Key stage 1, Junior/Key Stage 2, Language Alive!, site specific | No Comments »

Gary R
November 6th, 2009

Changes…

A couple of years ago we asked primary schools we regularly work with about their interest in a tour “looking at issues around sex and relationships for Key Stage 2”, and 57% of schools were quite or very interested. We’re currently looking again at developing this sort of project (funding permitting…) to go in next year’s offer to schools.

So this week’s discussions on sex and relationship education have been quite timely for us. The plans by Ed Balls to remove the opt out for parents for children over 15 has, predictably, had mixed press. The BBC reported broadly positive feedback, whilst the Daily Mail focussed on fines for parents and religious leaders saying parents would ‘vote with their feet’.

Of particular interest to us, in the light of us planning a Key Stage 2 project, is the report from the BBC that a third of those polled said the right should end at age 11, and 20% said there should be no opt out at all.

It’s clear that the schools we work with do have an interest in this sort of work. There will, of course, never be a consensus…

Posted in Issue-based/PSHE, The Play House | No Comments »

Gary R
November 3rd, 2009

Digital potentials

Today we’ve received some great news. We’ve been funded by the Arts Council England, West Midlands Digital Content Development Programme to conduct some research and development into… well… digital content.

So what does that mean?

What it means for us is a chance to look at how we engage with schools, young people, clients and funders, and to consult about how we make things better. We’re anticipating overhauling our resources & evaluation, and for the first time making them every bit as participatory as our programmes. There’ll be new ways to extend the legacy of our programmes, support teachers, and involve children and young people.

Well, that’s the theory.

We’re getting excited by the potential, but we’re only part of the equation. It would be easy for us (and me in particular) to get carried away with what we can do with new technology and online resources. But we really need to know what’s going on already, what’s useful, what’s not. What do you need?

We’ll be talking to children, young people, teachers, funders and practitioners about what they’d like to see, but whoever you are out there reading this blog – young person, teacher, practitioner, educationalist – we’ll need your perspective too.

One of the best bits about this funding, particularly in the current climate, is that they encourage you to experiment, and even fail, because that’s how we’ll learn.

Not that we’re planning to fail of course, but this really is a chance for us throw everything up in the air and see where it lands. Which is very exciting, but a little bit daunting too.

Just as it should be…

Posted in The Play House | 2 Comments »

John F
October 28th, 2009

New kid on the blog

As a tribute both to Gary Roskell’s powers of persuasion and to the determination of the new boy to impress, I am writing this ‘blog’. I am more than a little technophobic and pretty useless too when it comes to the natural, chatty, ‘personal’ style these things seem to require.

I have now been a core member at The Play House for half a term and I’m just starting to realise the profound consequences of my new employment. For example, I haven’t had a job which requires me to work in an office since I was a Law Clerk in the Crown Prosecution Service (and that’s so long ago that when I worked there you hand wrote the barrister’s briefs – not as intimate as it sounds- and sent them to a ‘typing pool’).

Now, obviously, The Play House is nothing like the CPS: you don’t leave the office to go to a place where individuals are to be condemned to years of incarceration in a Government Institution (unless your view of education is horribly cynical); but I am, nevertheless, once again, partly an office worker.

So, what’s changed? (apart from the loss of a typing pool). When I worked for the CPS I was late almost every day, (they gave me an alarm clock when I left after my 9 months there). Well, I am pleased to report that I am now an excellent timekeeper. My boss doesn’t show me pictures of gruesome crimes as a way of inspiring me to greater prosecuting ambition (although there is a picture of Malcolm made up as The Joker which took me back).

There isn’t a big board telling everybody where everybody else is supposed to be – oh actually there is – but I haven’t yet walked in and learned from it that I am supposed to be in Warwick Crown Court 2 prosecuting in the Queen vs Burglar Bill 10 miles away at that very moment. And until now, Deborah hasn’t had a call from a Head Teacher asking why the new teacher/actor is wearing brown shoes and a tie with a square end and when he proposes to start dressing appropriately (or if she has she’s kept it quiet). In fact, thinking about it, there are loads of differences, not the least of which is that The Play House has an office I look forward to going to.

John

Posted in The Play House | No Comments »

Malcolm J
October 9th, 2009

We just have to figure out how to weave the strands together…

I had mixed feelings when Gary and Deborah told me that I would be working on our preventing violent extremism programme, Tapestry. Excitement as this was to be a high profile project dealing with up to the minute issues that had great impact on all of us. There was also a significant level of trepidation, even fear. Would we do justice to this very complex and sensitive area? If we got this wrong we could make tensions worse.  So no pressure there then!

Inspired (if that’s the right word) by the protests in Luton around the soldiers of the Anglian regiment returning from Iraq we chose to set our drama in a closed down shop unit on a recession hit city high street (you might think Woolworths, but we refuse to comment…).

We created Jason, fighting on behalf of “The Young Patriots”, a far right organization; Hassan, arguing in support of an extreme Islamist organization, “The Circle of Truth”; and Naz, caught in the middle, a young British Muslim woman trying to make them see the complexity of the truth.

This allowed us the opportunity to explore parallels in right wing and Islamist extremism, each fuelling greater excesses in the other.

The research sessions we ran with a variety of diverse groups served to allay some of my anxieties. One of the key things that helped was the eagerness with which people wanted to talk about extremism in all its forms.  It was something everybody was thinking about but not talking about as if they were as worried as me about saying the wrong thing and offending people. I took great heart that people were less sensitive than I had imagined ready and willing to have this conversation.

But the violence in the City Centre in early September reignited worries in me that we might be opening an extremely lively can of worms. It felt as if we had been overtaken by our own prediction.

As we continue the tour it is the young people we are meeting on a daily basis that are quietening my fears. They are thoughtful, sensitive, optimistic and passionate. They challenge each of the extremists in the programme equally whilst acknowledging that both have some justification for their disenchantment. It is the courses of action that Jason and Hassan have chosen to resolve their frustrations that the young people so vehemently take issue with.

Which begs the question: what can each of us do to avoid the future of death, fear, anger and revenge that is predicted in the drama if Jason and Hassan continue on their present course?

Answers on a postcard please! Or simply comment below.

Posted in Issue-based/PSHE, Secondary/Key Stage 3/4 | 11 Comments »

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