At Thomas Bennett Community College students were encouraged to develop their talents and interests in a number of Creative Arts.

One of the many highlights of the project was their involvement in composing soundtracks and lyrics with practitioners from Audio Active. They chose the theme of bullying as a focus for their project and students went on to incorporate skills in devising and verbatim theatre.

The students created their own testimonies by conducting interviews with families/friends about life in Crawley which provided the framework for musical compositions and lyrics to evolve, using selected statements from the testimonies and interviews, these soundtracks formed the backdrop to their creative movement pieces.

Manor Green College, Ifield Community College and Manor Green Primary enjoyed a series of dance workshops facilitated over a residency style framework from Stopgap Dance Company.

The work culminated in a dance performance sharing with an audience of 2000 people at a community Jubilee celebration event on the 11th of June 2022.

"All the children are beginning to enjoy working with each other and are always curious and keen to know what the next session will bring. I feel it has enabled some 'growth in mind-set"

Teacher Feedback

At the Mill Primary Academy, we worked with a select group of 7 students with the key focus is on developing positive friendships and helping the pupils understand how to establish positive relationships with peers.

Through the ancient art of Japanese Bunraku puppetry the pupils explored how to make the puppet ‘feel’ like a human being and embody human emotions. Collaboration and team work encouraged them to experiment with moving various parts of the puppet, and helped them understand the importance of clear communication and decision making.

One of the ambitions for the project was for this group to present and share their learning with pupils from Year 2. They improvised scenes of a new child wanting to make new friends, exploring problems and resolutions within friendships and other tangible real life scenarios.

"We start each session with some simple games and exercises which bring focus, confidence and collaboration within the group before proceeding with the main focus of the session. Starting with ‘insults’ which the pupils loved, they all spoke a short piece of Shakespeare text on their own.

Exploring quotes from the play about magic, ambition, guilt, and king/queenship we discussed each short extract for meaning."

Ed Bennett – Actor / Director

/Freelance Practitioner

"All the students loved the decoration stage, as this enabled them to put their own individual creative stamp on their mask."

Diane Dunning – Illustrator and Arts Educator

The arts projects for schools at Hilltop Primary School, involved 90 students who have been exploring the themes from Shakespeare's Macbeth, including kinship, revenge, war, jealousy, magic and murder.

The pupils created short scenes around ambition, authority, fate and guilt. They have worked with a visual artist to make character masks, which has helped them to define imaginative characters whilst improvising different scenes from the story.

Charlie Jameson, School Wellbeing Lead

"Thank you so much for this opportunity for our students; the leaders of the sessions have been friendly, approachable, and aware of the differing needs of the group. They have all had an appropriate approach - sensitive to how the students might be feeling about performing, whilst also confidently nudging the students to move out of their comfort boundaries!"

School's Wellbeing Lead

"My daughter has not stopped laughing and smiling since getting home. She said the activities they had to do were all about trust and were really fun. Honestly, I haven't heard her giggle like this in ages - it's infectious and has cheered us all up. She's really excited about what's coming too. Please pass on my warmest thanks to the leaders of this initiative and a big thank you to you for organising this. 20/10! Job very well done and it's only the first session!"

Parent, Davison High school

At Davison CofE High School, Year 9 students used creative writing, text exploration, art & design, movement and camera work to respond to the theme of ‘What Wellbeing Means to Us’. A cohort of students have successfully completed their Bronze Arts Award alongside this learning.

For their project, they chose trust, friendship, and endurance as their key themes for a series of short films

Riverbeach Primary School worked with us over a prolonged period and through the transition for students from Yr 5 to Yr 6. Students enjoyed a focus on costume design to support their work on A Midsummer Night's Dream by making crowns for their school production. Others enjoyed creative writing workshops to support their work on WW2 which culminated in a shared performance on Remembrance Day 2022.

We then organised for a group of 60, Year 6 students to attend the Creative Centre for Immersive and Extended Reality (CCIXR) which is part of Portsmouth University.

The students had the opportunity to tour the facility, see demonstrations of Motion Capture, Volumetric Capture, Photogrammetry, music Technology and VR/AR - as well as virtual production. They also had a brief opportunity to experience an "introduction to immersive XR" session.

Finally a smaller group of 21 students worked with Level-3 to create their own video game which has been published and is available online to play.