Key themes:  History, SEAL, PSHE & Citizenship

Where There’s Smoke… is an exciting new programme for key stage one (5 – 7 year olds) that blends participatory drama, storytelling, teacher-in-role and paper play to explore the impact and significance of the Great Fire of London, and to enable children to empathise with the human stories involved in such a disaster. Its development has been funded by Arts Council England, West Midlands.

The need for such a programme was identified in previous school’s consultations conducted by The Play House and was largely attributed to the inclusion of the topic within the national curriculum framework. However the Fire of London was also identified as an area that teachers found challenging to teach as a result of the scale of the event and lack of connection to the lives of their children.

The interest of The Play House in the Fire of London stemmed from similar concerns. All of the company’s previous work inspired by historical events has been created for pupils from key stage two (8 – 11 year olds) where children have already developed the conceptual understanding to be able to make connections between the lives and experiences of those being depicted in our programmes and themselves. As a result of this, there was a real desire by The Play House to make meaningful and rich participatory theatre using some of the most dynamic events and people from history, but suitable for a younger audience.

Where There’s Smoke… presents just such an opportunity, not only in supporting children in learning about the past, but also in making connections between historical and personal events and experiences and we hope that the programme and the activities and information included in these resources will provide a rich stimulus for teachers and pupils alike.