Over the past couple of weeks I have been working for The Play House and Balsall Heath Children’s Centre on two play schemes. The first was  a week long ‘Transititions project with 4 year olds to help the transition between nursery and reception.  The theme for this was ‘The Farm and included a day at Umberslade Children’s farm, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

We also worked with an artist and two other teacher/actors.

The other project was a ‘Play in a Day’ for 8 – 10 year olds as part of an Arts Camp, which also was successful.

After Gerard and I meet tomorrow to discuss the next steps for ‘Don’t Blame it on the Wolf’, we are taking a few days break before launching into new projects and productions later on this month.

Today has been a lovely day as I went to two schools where I had worked in the past on Arts projects. Both sets of children were leaving their respective schools and it was good to say a last good bye and wish them well.  It was also good to visit two such creative, exciting schools. They know who they are!

Today has been sweltering in the Midlands but it didn’t stop us at Open Stage donning hat, gloves and winter coat all in the name of art. Working with a local Primary school, who have been looking at Nepal, we created an interactive day where the children walked up Mount Everest, stopped at base camp and considered the challenges of such an adventure.

An enjoyable day was had by all with the teachers commenting that they were delighted with how it went. (”It turned out better than we could ever have hoped for”)

Today I have been working with Claire Marshall, Michael Supple and  Nikky Smedley (for CR8US) to support a local school in their journey towards a new, more creative curriculum.  We had a very positive day where the staff gave a huge amount of themselves to the process. During the morning we looked at the schools core values and in the afternoon began to harness the passions and interests of both staff and pupils with these in our planning.

Feedback from staff:

• I would like some more days like this to help understand how to encourage children to be more creative and myself be more confident in delivering. It has been very informative and enlightening, just need a little more input / direction to give me confidence.

• Today has shown just how much flexibility we can now have to try things, be more creative – planning has become more exciting – and nice to see more staff becoming more open-minded and creative.

• Today has made me realise I have relevant skills / ideas that can be used in the school. I have also gained confidence during the day and felt part of a team.

Today I have been working with a very nice group of students who are studying unit 4 of the Edexel Theatre Studies Course. For this module they need to put themselves in the role of a director and discuss both their rehearsal methodology and their over all concept for a specific audience.

Anyone interested in similar sessions for their school, please contact us on 0121 777 9086 to discuss their needs / costs etc.

This week I have been storytelling at Birmingham Hippodrome, using their Panto, Sleeping Beauty as the starting point. I had a very enjoyable morning yesterday with a group of  Early Childhood students from Solihull College joined in with great enthusiasm.  There were a number of great storytellers amongst them and Jo their tutor was very supportive of the work.

Photos to follow shortly

A good week – both the projects went very well and the performances were great and appreciated by their respective audiences (year 3 children for the Food Net Project and families for the BRB project). Now its just the final admin ends to tidy up at Open Stage before breaking up for Christmas.

We wish you all a very Happy Christmas and Peaceful New Year.

Over the past term I have been working on a number of exciting schools projects. The first was the continuation of a relationship with Devonshire Infant School, where i worked with Year 2 (who i had first worked with in Early Years – see Drama Ed page for details of that project). What has been lovely about this project is that I have got to know the children as individuals and we have built up a trusting relationship which has meant that both they and their teachers have been comfortable ’stepping out into the unknown’ and trying a new way of working.  This project was part of the schools Creative Partnerships focus ’storytelling without the book’.   In September I worked with all three classes using ‘have a go Joe’ as the character to link the stories to; whilst in November I worked with the gifted and talented and helped develop their storytelling techniques and language as an aid to improving their story writing.

I have also been working at Nonsuch School again with Year 2, using ‘Mantle of the Expert’  to explore the Great Fire of London and Fire Safety. The children were put in role as Experts from the WM Fire Service and were tasked with writing a booklet for the school explaining about the dangers of fire. As part of that research they went back in time, witnessed the Great Fire of London and gave Sir Christopher Wren some tips on re-building London!

Last night I was at the final workshop for a Birmingham Royal Ballet Outreach Project I am doing, which  involves a small group of  young people developing a piece of non verbal drama as a response to ‘Cyrano’.

Next week is performance week for two of my projects –  the BRB ‘Cyrano’ project and another project I am assisting on (through The Play House) which is a Peer Ed project funded by Food Net. This involves 12 upper KS2 children performing a rehearsed piece to classes of Year 3’s from local schools in Kings Norton.

I have faith in both projects and look forward to seeing them reach their potential.