Children & the Arts

 The Partners

 

Alexandra Park Junior School is situated near the heart of Oldham, an ex cotton mill town on the outskirts of Manchester.  The majority of the school’s pupils come from the local area which has high levels of social and economic deprivation.  All of the school’s pupils are from minority ethnic backgrounds, predominantly Pakistani.  There is only one child in the entire school who has English as a first language and many of the children arrive from their infant school with very low levels of literacy.

 

 

The Coliseum Theatre is located in the heart of Oldham and has been a vibrant part of the local community for over 100 years.   In the Autumn term the Coliseum invited Alexandra Park Junior School to join their Children & the Arts Start project and to bring the pupils to the Coliseum@Uppermill performances.  The Coliseum started the Upper Mill programme in order to improve their offering to families and young people by providing a show on the first Friday of every month in a suitably scaled venue.  The funding from Children & the Arts has enabled the Coliseum to add an additional early afternoon performance on each of these Fridays which has greatly enhanced their opportunities to work with local schools. 

 

 

The Project

Improving their language skills is a core aim for the school on a day to day basis.  The drama workshops with Oldham Coliseum gives them the opportunity to practice their speaking and listening skills in situations that are supportive, inclusive and very importantly, fun.  

 The school is delighted to be taking part in the project.  The vast majority of pupils rarely go far outside of the area in which they live and they therefore don’t have a wide experience of the world around them and the project with the Coliseum is beneficial on many levels.

“It’s important to give them as many experiences as they can get and the project with the Oldham Coliseum as well as  providing them with excellent opportunities to improve their language skills allows them to see and do things that would otherwise be beyond their reach.”Head teacher

During the drama workshops the children were confident, enthusiastic and very imaginative.  They readily shared their ideas with each other and with the workshop leader and were quick to praise one another’s efforts.  They also displayed a real familiarity with what was expected of them and were quick to get fully involved in the session.  Their enjoyment was plain to see.

 “it gives you time to express yourself” Pupil

The relationship between Alexandra Park and the Coliseum has been going so well that the Coliseum has invited the school to be part of a new storytelling project that focuses on literacy.  The Coliseum was able to have two full days with all three of the classes in Year 4, during which they developed and then staged, for the rest of the school, three separate stories.  The Head Teacher has long been advocate of the power of drama skills in helping to improve communication and literacy skills and the Coliseum project has underlined this.  It has also given her staff the confidence to use drama skills right across the curriculum.