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Victoria Allen and Anne-Marie Claire show how a strategic approach can help to develop strong educational activity.

The Arts Development and Education department at the Theatre Royal Plymouth has undergone a period of great change over the past 12 months. Strategically, education has always been emphatically at the heart of our work. A realisation of the importance and future untapped potential of the Theatre’s education work was the driving force behind the creation of a unified Production and Education Centre, the award-winning TR2. However, the reformation of the overall policy and structure of the department has re-emphasised the significance of its role, not only within the organisation, but also, more importantly, in the community and region of the South West.

The chief instigator of this change is Victoria Allen. With a background that includes a period as a youth worker, and stints at the West Yorkshire Playhouse managing community projects and Leeds City Council in their arts and regeneration unit, Victoria strongly believes that the arts are a powerful tool for learning and social change. She also believes ‘education’ is only a part of what her department does. Creativity, learning in all its forms and participation are the core principles of her department. To reflect this, the Arts Development and Education department has a new name – ‘Creative Learning’ – and is divided into three key areas:

• Education – all work with schools, colleges and universities
• Community engagement – outreach and audience development work with specific communities, and
• The young people’s programme – work with young people outside school hours or outside a formal education context.

Three full-time project managers have been recruited with expertise in and responsibility for each area of work.

The Education Manager’s remit is to develop and manage the formal education policy, developing long-term partnerships with schools through sustained project work. Projects include ‘Playhouse’, where new writing is commissioned for primary schools to be produced and performed in the Drum Theatre, and ‘Participate’, a programme of workshops and post-show talks linked to performances onstage. The objective is to integrate events closely with the school curriculum and increase the number of in-service teacher training (INSET) sessions for teachers. The Education Manager is also responsible for developing a Theatre Royal Schools Policy to cover every aspect of how the theatre engages with schools. Other departments within the organisation (including programming, sales and marketing, and customer service) will contribute their knowledge and expertise to this policy.

The aim of the community engagement programme is to create consistent, stable relationships with targeted communities (many of which are marginalised or excluded from society) through bespoke projects. There are two strands to this work. The first is outreach projects with excluded communities, such as people living in areas of Plymouth suffering high levels of multiple deprivation, refugees and the homeless. A new initiative will engage homeless people in creative activity through performance and visual artforms, leading to a multi-media performance in the Drum Theatre. One aim of the project is to increase the confidence, motivation and life skills of the participants, demonstrating how involvement in the arts can improve people’s lives. The other strand of work sees specific access projects being developed for audience development in the areas of, for example, diversity, disability and early years.

The young people’s programme includes projects for hard-to-engage young people in partnership with other agencies. A network of satellite youth theatres in community settings is being developed aimed at engaging young people who lack opportunity, are at risk of exclusion or who live in areas where there is little provision outside school. There is also a varied programme of projects open to all young people, enabling them to participate in the theatre through technical workshops, performance projects (such as the already established Theatre Royal’s Young Company), new writing projects and specific training programmes leading to the creation of shows in the Drum Theatre.

In this article we can only touch upon the extent and variety of the work of Creative Learning, but its overall objective is about learning both through and in the arts. It’s about taking part and using theatre and performance to help create communities, change perceptions and offer new experiences to those who have no direct access to the arts. Creative Learning is at the core of what we do as a theatre, and the work it undertakes is a key element of our vision and aspiration.

Victoria Allen is Creative Learning Director and Anne-Marie Clark is the Press Officer at Theatre Royal Plymouth.
e: victoria.allen@theatreroyal.com; anne-marie.clark@theatreroyal.com
t: 01752 230479