Community Project

SETTING UP THE PROJECT - TERM TWO

In the penultimate week of the term, we were arranged into sub divided groups within the year and launched with our community audience who we would be working with for the next 6 weeks. 

Our group consists of: myself,  Zach, Ruby, Nastassja, Zafra, Alice, Sean, Stella, Saffron, Sofianne, Shifa, Tyrell, Sophia and Luke and we were made aware that we would be working with two groups of primary school children from The Crescent Primary School, just next door to our school, and our project would be coordinated by Susanna. 

Our skills from the term so far will hopefully come to fruition, since we've learnt about different devices to captivate an audience from a community and create some sort of change.  As in Year 12 I completed with the Unit 12 unit on children's theatre, my first impressions are quite positive. I'd got experience working with children and creating work targeted towards their audience before, so I feel that as a group we can utilise the skills that we'd learnt from that unit and develop them with this project. What differs from Unit 12 to this project working with children is that Unit 12 consisted of us devising a show for children on an educational topic - this would culminate in few performances to many young primary school children as well as a facilitated workshop. We were completely independent over many weeks without interaction with the children, and had to conduct a lot of research into children's theatre in order to make it successful. However, with this project, we will be working directly with the children as more of a collaborative process. They will come first - their reactions to exercises we do and the stimulus we give them will ultimately contribute towards an eventual performance that we do with the individual groups. The essence of the project is putting the children first: allowing them to get an insight into drama and acting, something they might not have had access to previously. 

The two groups we'll be working with our Year One children (5-7 year olds) and Year Three children (7-9year olds). We will be working alongside the basis of what they are learning about at school, and planning weekly sessions that aim to push the potential of the children. Year One's are looking at dinosaurs and the book 'We're Going On A Bear Hunt' by Michael Rosen. The Year Two's are looking at their local area Croydon and street art. As such, our targets for each group are going to be slightly different. With the year ones, the children will be much younger. The likelihood that they have been exposed to drama is much smaller. They are probably going to be in the midst of developing their primary social skills, as well as learning how to properly read and write (which is probably why they're studying books like We're Going on a Bear Hunt). As such, we need to ensure that we have a more simple basis of plans  that don't over-stretch the attention spans of the children, and aim to allow them to have fun and enjoy the sessions, loving drama. They should be highly educational and interesting, using the dinosaurs to tie in knowledge and using the story of the book as a narrative to help the sessions flow. Contrastingly, as the Year 3 children are slightly older and they are studying their local area, with the essence of community theatre, like with the Year 1 children we should be putting them entirely first over our personal needs and should be aiming to empower them not only through drama but encourage them to love Croydon and feel fascinated by it. 

A challenge that we will face inevitably is that we are expecting to work with quite a lot of children, nonetheless because we are in a large group of 15 people, I think that we will be able to manage the children with more ease. We will just have to be tactile and strategic in how we plan sessions. 

In the session we had before the half term, we evaluated the skills that we have so far and what we want to achieve with the sessions. 

• Nourishing the child's imagination

Children are so much more imaginative than we are - their minds are much more freer and less weighed down in comparison to us as young adults. As such, they are incredibly smart and shouldn't be patronised or undermined. In the sessions, we had a general consensus that as facilitators of the workshops we don't want to end up patronising the children. We want the exercises that we do to be fun and enjoyable, and things that are educational while putting emphasis on the imagination of the child.

• Putting the children first and building their confidence

When I was a child, I was incredibly shy and not massively confident. Doing school plays and having exposure to acting and the arts was something that was incredibly beneficial to me in stretching my horizons and being more confident. I think that giving the children the access to the arts is so important and therefore with every session we should ensure that we are constantly putting the children first and understanding their needs as facilitators over being selfish. If we treat the children with respect and commit to the sessions, then perhaps their early exposure to drama could benefit them for the better, and it might be something that really sticks with them from an early age. Understanding the importance that this has for children in the midst of their school routine is something we should all acknowledge. In the sessions, we should notice the quieter children as well as the more outspoken children and cater specifically to each child, noticing each and every one. 

• Engaging the children with a constant element of fun 

We spoke a lot about different warm up games and exercises we could do that corresponded with the units the children are studying at school. As these children are quite young, we need to be adaptable and aware of their attention spans, being able to engage them from the minute the session begins to the end. Having a bag of different icebreakers, games and exercises we could do that will stimulate their imaginations and keep their attention will be important towards having successful sessions. The sessions should be broken up with funner warm up games, having more concentration focused thought provoking exercises, imagination fuelled drama exercises and reflections. After all, children concentrate more when they are actively having fun - so injecting fun into everything we do will help the sessions be successful.

• Making the sessions flow

In order to make the sessions flow and have a sense of organisation with such a large group of us, we negotiated that we will all at some point have to take a leading stance within the workshops, being able to run things and direct the children. Having broken the sessions up, working in groups with the children may be an efficient way to run things during tasks that require more concentration, however during a warm up or something that is more fun should involve the whole group. When we plan the sessions, we should be mindful and adaptable to the children, evaluating what will suit them best.

• Communication and evaluation 

As each week progresses, we should be aware that the process is also a devising process and we are working towards a final show. As such, we should be recording our observations of how the children are responding to the sessions, and even actively having reflection or feedback at the end of sessions or throughout in order to gain a sense of how they are reacting to things. This will make each session more concentrated towards getting the best out of each child, and helping us better ourselves as theatre facilitators over the weeks.