Approaching its 25th anniversary, Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation offers inspiring drama opportunities to open eyes and minds
Back in 2000, eight schools in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire took to the stage of the Torch Theatre for two nights to perform abridged plays by Shakespeare to a full house. It had all started with Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, a series conceived by then head of animation at S4C Chris Grace. The series was hugely popular and lives on today in schools. A festival seemed a next logical step. It let young people do what Shakespeare intended and turn stories on the page into their own unique productions.
Fast forward to 2024 and Shakespeare Schools Festival, now Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation (SSF), delivers the largest youth drama festival in the world. An estimated 300,000 plus young people have taken part over the years. It is open to all backgrounds and settings – junior, senior, independent, SEND schools and pupil referral units. The success of the venture has been driven from the start by young people’s vitality – and the inspiring teachers (some 11,000 to date) who join the journey with them and become teacher-directors.
Shakespeare may not have seemed the most obvious choice for such a diverse age group, but children rise to the challenge with verve and extraordinary originality. Recently, a Portsmouth school delivered a Romeo & Juliet based around the deep rivalry between Portsmouth and Southampton football clubs – even wearing kits given by the teams. At a school in Birmingham, pupils chose to stage Othello highlighting the gang violence and gun and knife crime the children had experienced firsthand in their neighbourhood. In describing why they chose this take, a participant said: “It shows the world what is happening to us”.
Once registered for the festival, schools get access to a wealth of resources and teachers get CPD training to help them facilitate the drama and bring it to life on the stage. It’s a four-to-six-month journey, culminating in the performances. Typically, there will be three or four schools taking to the stage together in a professional theatre local to them to a full audience.
The mix of schools brings very different interpretations, but the spirit of camaraderie between the children adds to the magic. It can be particularly moving to watch pupils from special educational needs schools participate alongside peers from primaries and secondaries. There have been dramas incorporating BSL or interpreted via light, sound or movement. At a recent staging at the Rose Theatre in Kingston, each SEND student on the stage had an adult supervisor with them and it became a mesmeric ensemble retelling of The Tempest. Last year, SSF interviewed a teacher from a SEND school whose students had performed. She said simply: “It gives voice to the voiceless”.
The impact of the festival is monitored closely by SSF, and it works hard to widen access in other ways. There’s an active Youth Board to keep young people front and centre of its work, and standalone workshops are offered to schools – including ‘Play in a Day’. The Shakespeare Schools International Film Festival was introduced during Covid and has gone from strength to strength in the UK and internationally. Here, children bring plays to life via short films, and learn acting, directing and storyboarding skills along the way. There’s also an access to higher education project in collaboration with Magdalen College Oxford. This year, 15 Year 10 students from Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire enjoyed a three-day residential there. They attended Shakespeare lectures and explored the library where a rare Fourth Folio is housed, finishing their stay by staging their Shakespeare plays at the college’s auditorium.
“The success has been driven from the start by young people’s vitality – and the teachers who join the journey with them”
Coram knows Shakespeare is a great vehicle for growing young people’s talents. Demystifying the Bard and delivering your own drama interpretation to an audience becomes a very big deal. It builds a great set of skills – it’s such a powerful thing to tell a story your way. Last year, over a fifth of participants spoke English as an additional language, so overcoming that additional hurdle is a confidence builder with a profound impact. Then, too, there are the parents who go to a professional theatre to watch their child, and then keep going back to the same theatre because they had a great time. The team at SSF are mindful of the value of this – both in supporting the many local theatres around the UK and in widening access to theatre itself, an art form that still struggles to shake off its elitist label.
Above all, Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation aims to open young people’s eyes and minds to possibilities – perhaps even to future careers in the creative sector. It has anecdotes about how performing in the festival has made a difference to individual lives and careers but, for its 25th anniversary year, there will be a callout to the 300,000+ Festival alumni to ask what Shakespeare did for them. Getting those stories back will be a reminder that (with apologies to Hamlet purists) for some young people the play’s the thing that changes everything.
Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation Shakespeare Schools Foundation
Further reading: Maida Vale School on the importance of creative engagement
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