Stan’s Cafe – The Classroom Stage

At Stan’s Cafe (that’s ​“caff” by the way), we designed The Classroom Stage, to explore the ways that theatre techniques can be applied to the teaching of English and across the curriculum. The project involved 10 schools, each working with us across 57 days of collaborative planning and classroom delivery, scaffolded by six CPDL events.

Teachers and artists brought topics to life by providing the opportunity for children to enact and experience. Children engaged with teachers in role and together they experimented with the devising process.

When we were recruiting schools, Headteachers were outspoken in their desire to encourage their staff to develop their creative thinking skills and set aside a manual that imposed a minute-by-minute map for lesson delivery. For teachers trained in the importance of a tightly formatted lesson plan with evidence collection this could be scary:

“It felt overwhelming to begin with. I was worried about evidencing the children’s work and there not being sufficient work in their books.”
Laura Jones, Primary Teacher

They learned to recognise that evidence of learning could easily be found outside the exercise books:

“I came to realise that the children got a lot out of sessions and we didn’t have to get something written in books to prove them worthwhile. This instead, became evident through the children’s enthusiasm, a boost in confidence and an overall improvement in their speaking and listening skills. The ideas and skills they had picked up through the drama-based sessions soon ​‘rubbed off’ and they were able to engage well in writing activities, empathise well with characters and write in role.”
Laura Jones, Primary Teacher 

Our artists too were nervous about encouraging teachers to take risks. There was an assumption that because teachers used rigorous planning tools that this must be the best way to design input too:

“To start with I spent hours constructing meticulous plans, searching for the perfect warm-up that centred around The Rainforest… only to find that there were none; I had to come up with activities myself. Eventually I was able to use the foundation I had and adapt to suit, I went with the flow of the session, what the children were responding well to and came up with ideas on the spot.”
Carys Jones, Classroom Stage Artist

With Headteachers we developed methods for spreading learning beyond a single classroom:

“By year two teachers who wouldn’t be thought of as natural risk takers wanted to be involved because they’d seen the impact”.
Angela Lowry, Headteacher

The success of the programme relied on two elements above all else – trust and an openness to risk taking:

“We embrace conscious risk taking, and we’re constantly looking for ways to learn when things go wrong – we celebrate our juicy mistakes.”
Angela Lowry, Headteacher

The legacy continues to become apparent. Half of the schools from programme went on to take part in our ambitious Commonwealth Games project. As an organisation we’ve developed a far deeper understanding of our own pedagogical approach and schools continue to report on the medium-term impacts:

“The Classroom stage has been a huge success. We have built such a great relationship with our artist who now works as an ​‘artist in residence’ in a range of different classes throughout the school.”
Laura Jones, Primary Teacher 

“THAT BREATHING STUFF REALLY WORKS”
Year 5 Student