Project Intro

Dawn worked on five main projects with the staff and pupils of Broom Barns School, often collaborating with Stevenage Museum and using trips out of school as the basis for projects. This is her personal statement about working with the school on Creativity for Life.

“Spending a year in Broom Barns has been a refreshing change from the shorter- term projects I have more recently been involved in; I have been able to develop relationships over time with both staff and pupils. At the start of the programme we decided that I would try to work with most of the teachers and classes in the school. For some teachers, the input has been quite intensive over a whole term, and for others it has been a few sessions. The teachers have come up with many inspiring ideas and have been very welcoming to my input and challenges - even when they might have felt the ambition of some of the work was causing unexpected challenges they always rode with it!

“I have really enjoyed immersing myself in those topic areas of which I previously had limited knowledge, and this has helped me bring new andunexpected things to the mix of ideas. The chance to enhance what the teacher already was doing and to help them to push their teaching experiences that step further to make it a different – often more practical – experience has been a valuable learning process for me too.

“Letting the children do the performance in progress, rather than always pushing to achieve a perfected result, has been an important approach for me during this programme. Often when working in the performance arts the practice for presentation can overshadow the process of experimentation. Some moments of performance in the project might have looked slightly chaotic to an observer, but I was happy that the children were focused on the experience of playing and exploring, rather than always working on the refining and perfecting stages!

“Thank you Broom Barns, for being very welcoming and for adventuring into the unknown with me."

Links

Project 1: Continuing Professional development sessions with Staff
Project 2: Fire!
Project 3: Giant Myths and Legends
Project 4: The Romans and the Celts
Project 5: Rama and Sita