Anne Dunkerley describes her experience as a lead for drama and how SHAPE in Schools has supported the arts in her school.
The recent television drama Mr Bates versus the Post Office has ignited the country’s anger and has been a catalyst to force politicians to act over what has been called by the media as the greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. As a Drama teacher I constantly tell my students that for thousands of years drama and the arts have been for a way for humans to makes sense of the world around them. The arts help us to explore what makes us human, to give a voice to those who may be unheard, to ask questions and to make us think. At a time when the arts are struggling to survive and are often the first subjects to disappear from school curriculums Mr Bates Verus the Post Office is a perfect response to the question of why the arts matter.
Drama is not and has never been a National Curriculum subject, being only mentioned briefly in the primary and secondary English curriculums. I often feel I have spent my thirty-year teaching career justifying and fighting for my subject and its rightful existence alongside the core and EBacc subjects. I was incredibly excited about being one of nine pilot schools for SHAPE in 2021/2, as the arts were seen as equally important as all the other subjects. The focus on promoting the viability and visibility of SHAPE subjects in schools, as future careers and how they make our lives better, more colourful and help us to make sense of the world perfectly matched my own beliefs.
Using object-based learning as the starting point for the workshops we trialled with Y8 allowed our students to look at these familiar everyday objects in new and diverse ways. Trains, Shoes, Masks and Sugar are objects we use without any real thought to their purpose and history. Using the concept of slow looking students were asked to look at each object in turn, consider their origins, their many uses, what each one meant to them and to make connections between the different ideas. Some objects captured their imaginations more than others and they loved shoes and trains, the latter being something that many of our students use every day to travel to school. The discussions they had were incredibly fascinating ranging from very personal responses such as the peculiar smell train carriages have to train sequences in their favourite films and the role of the railways in the colonisation of Africa!
Students often struggle to use knowledge from one subject area in another and how it correlates. The SHAPE resources allowed the students to do this and because the starting points are so familiar everyone was able to make an informed and personal contribution.
Whilst I approached many of the activities in the workshops as a Drama teacher for example, we started the Shoe workshop with multiple pairs of shoes in the centre of the room and asked the students what type of person they felt would wear these shoes and to create a character based on their ideas. Talking to and sharing ideas with teachers from around the UK who were part of the pilot programme it was interesting to see how a history or languages teacher approached the workshops, how accessible the resources were and how they could be successfully used across all the different SHAPE subjects.
This term with our Y7s we are using the Sugar resources as part of a cross curricular arts project with Music and Art. Each form will create a whole class play, compose original pieces of music, and create giant sugar inspired sculptures which we will share in an informal performance and exhibition. At the time of writing, I am not sure what the end products will look like. I know the plays we create will have a strong connection to sugar, use a range of different devising and performance skills but the plot line and themes will be something we discuss, explore, and create together drawing on our knowledge and understanding of sugar and other SHAPE subjects. Who knew sugar could be so exciting!
Anne Dunkerley is Faculty Lead for Drama and Artsmark at Guiseley School in England. She took part in two phases of the SHAPE in Schools pilot programme and continues to use the resources with her KS3 learners.
The SHAPE in School resources are available to download for free on our website and on TES.