Engaging very young children in arts activity has the added benefit of attracting parents and older siblings. Steve Ball describes an innovative project designed to provide free theatre for babies and their families.
The best ideas don?t die: they get recycled, adapted or reinvented! As Head of Arts for Birmingham City Council, I facilitated a series of study visits enabling arts practitioners to visit arts and culture organisations across Europe. On one of these, Keith Stubbs, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra?s Education and Projects Manager, visited the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and shared his experiences at a seminar for the city?s arts community. On returning, he referred to ?God?s Children?, an initiative designed to provide a free concert for every baby born in Helsinki in 2000 for the first seven years of their lives.
When I was appointed Education Director at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre (The REP) in 2003 I had this idea in the back of my mind as I reflected on our audience profile. Ironically, like many city-centre theatres, the nearer you live to The REP, the less likely you are to buy tickets to see our productions. I began by developing a number of community engagement initiatives, including work with inner-city schools, local residents and (borrowing heavily from Keith?s discovery in Helsinki) an initiative that has become known as ?REP?s Children?. The concept is simple: every baby born at Birmingham?s City and Sandwell Hospitals last October will receive a free theatre experience every year for the first ten years of their lives. The benefits to us of the idea are two-fold. First, it engages families from our neighbourhoods in the life of the theatre, and, second, it forces us to produce theatre for babies and very young children ? something that, despite some notable exceptions, rarely happens in the UK.
In early 2004, a steering group was formed, which included members from the hospital trust, Surestart, the primary care trust, Birmingham City Council Family Learning Service and the University of Birmingham. We appointed a REP?s Children Co-ordinator and identified October 2004 as the month in which every baby born at one of the two hospitals would be eligible to sign up for the project. The recruitment of parents to the project was undertaken by community midwives, who registered 230 families. Some of the parents took part in backstage tours before their babies were born and others attended the theatre with their new-born babies at the beginning of November.
The first dedicated production for the ?REP?s Children? babies will take place in the front of house spaces at The REP in April. We will be producing ?Open House?, a multi-sensory installation featuring a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and garden with three actors who will perform and interact with the babies and their parents. Laurent Dupont, a French theatre director who has directed work for young children with a number of European companies, will be acting as Artistic Consultant on the production. But ?Open House? will not be confined to the babies born in October 2004. Throughout its two-week run at the theatre and subsequent tour of Surestart and Creative Partnerships venues, the production will be accessible to babies, young children and parents from across the city.
The project is also enhanced by the appointment of an Early Years Arts Worker, who will work in partnership with The REP and the LEA?s Family Learning Service to provide year-round drama and arts provision for 0?3 year olds and their parents in neighbourhood nurseries and early years settings. The project is being evaluated by a senior researcher from the University of Birmingham who has expertise in participatory research, and who will be conducting a study with a sample of the babies and their parents. She will be involving the parents in the research, as well as observing their interaction with their babies. This will ensure that the children?s responses are heard, listened to and fed into future productions.
Central to the development of the early stages of this project has been a commitment to a number of core principles that surround all of our learning and participation activities. These include ensuring that the quality of the work is of the highest possible standard, a commitment to social inclusion, cultural diversity and lifelong learning, and, most importantly with this project in particular, a recognition of the value associated with working in partnership with individuals, families and agencies. We believe that we can offer young children and their families life-enhancing opportunities through theatre but we also recognise that we have just as much to learn from our own communities.
Steve Ball is Education Director at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
e: steve.ball@birmingham-rep.co.uk;
t: 0121 245 2092.