How Southend became a Learning Town…
An abandoned swimming pool transformed into an eco-laboratory. An electronic orchestra built and ‘played’ by dozens of six-year-olds. The Bible as told through break-dancing.
These are some of the ideas that have emerged through the Learning Town Project, an innovative exploration of how arts-led approaches to learning can engage audiences beyond school-goers. The Project will culminate on 2 July in a public ‘fair’ at The Victoria shopping plaza in Southend, featuring games and activities — all related to enquiry and learning.
Thirteen Southend schools have been working on the Learning Town Project since January, alongside more than 30 artists whose practices include film, dance, drama, animation, landscape architecture, writing, and circus skills. Each school has developed a unique enquiry—specific to that school’s needs and environment — that seeks to reveal new ways of working both for teachers and young people.
The Learning Town Project will go public with the Learning Town Fair. With professional light, set and sound design, the Learning Town Fair will have the aesthetic and energy of a typical British fair, with fair stalls, prizes and performers. The difference is that every activity at the Fair will derive from each school’s Learning Town work, and will play with ideas about questioning, curiosity and what it means to discover and learn.
“It was important for us to engage the entire Southend community in what it means to be curious, and for everyone to have an opportunity to feel what young people feel when they’re excited about learning,” said Samantha Holdsworth, co-director of Nimble Fish, which is producing the Learning Town Project.
The Learning Town Project is a collaboration between the Southend Education Trust and Royal Opera House Creative Partnerships. The Southend Education Trust represents all 55 schools in Southend, making it amongst the largest such entities in the UK. The aim of the Trust is to advance education by providing additional or new learning opportunities for the benefit of learners in Essex in imaginative forward-looking ways. For further information on the Southend Education Trust, please contact Irene Palmer on 01702 534880 or irene.palmer@southend.gov.uk.
Award-winning Nimble Fish focuses on delivering high-quality creative moments via meaningful community engagement. The company has created work at Tate Modern, National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and in schools and communities throughout Essex and London. For further information on Nimble Fish, please contact Greg Klerkx on 07930 394158 or greg@nimble-fish.co.uk
Creative Partnerships
Managed by Arts Council England and funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Creative Partnerships supports thousands of innovative, long-term partnerships between schools and creative professionals, from architects to scientists, multi-media developers to artists. They inspire schools to deliver the curriculum through innovative teaching techniques, and young people to challenge themselves in new ways, gain confidence and take an active role in their learning. Young people develop the skills they need to perform well not only in exams and extra-curricular activities, but also in the workplace and wider society. For more information on Royal Opera House Creative Partnerships, contact Jules Easlea 07706 795248 or jubilantpr@yahoo.co.uk
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is the home of three world class performing companies – The Royal Ballet, The Royal Opera and The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. It is a focal point for national and international artistic excellence, where the evolving traditions of opera and ballet are taken to the highest levels. From its iconic building, renowned stars and rising talent inspire diverse audiences around the world.
In addition to the performances on the mainstage, a wide variety of educational activities together with a programme of engagement with local communities reaches more than 140,000 people each year. Opera and ballet is taken into schools; children can experience for themselves the thrill of creating and performing a new work; others from diverse backgrounds and children in Thurrock are learning backstage crafts such as set building and scenery painting.
The Royal Opera House Production Park
In 2010, the Royal Opera House is relocating its production facility to state of the art workshops being built in Purfleet as part of the Royal Opera House Production Park, the UK’s first ever national centre of excellence for technical skills, crafts and production for the performing arts and live music industries. It will lead the way in the performing arts and training in backstage and technical skills, enriching the live music and theatre industries with a constant stream of fresh talent. Led by a world-class cultural organisation and located in Thurrock in the Thames Gateway, at the heart of Europe’s largest regeneration area, it will inspire the local community with new horizons and create new opportunities to help the region fulfil its true potential.
The Royal Opera House Production Park is supported by a unique partnership including Arts Council England, Creative & Cultural Skills, the East of England Development Agency, the Royal Opera House, Thurrock Council and Thurrock Thames Gateway Development Corporation.
For more information:
Royal Opera House Creative Partnerships Thames Gateway
6th Floor, Thameside Theatre Complex,
Orseet rd,
Grays,
Essex RM17 5DX
Tel 01375 413388 Email: rohcp@roh.org.uk
