Linking within a Secondary School
Reflections – a drama-based project using
performance, music, and art to explore issues of identity
Featured as an example of good practice in the
report by Sir Keith Ajegbo, The Diversity and Citizenship
Curriculum Review 2007, Reflections developed over
three years to enable students in a large mixed secondary school,
and eventually from feeder primary schools too, to explore issues
of diversity. Groups from widely diverse heritages took part,
predominantly White British and Pakistani Muslim, with a fairly
high number of children from families of asylum seekers and
refugees, as well as new immigrants from Eastern Europe some of
whom lacked basic English skills. Some students came from poor
families, some had faced racism and prejudice.
Reflections created a model of working
together, devising and performing, which demonstrates how active
citizenship can work – to explore problems and to promote cohesion,
to cultivate good citizenship in a local and global community of
diverse groups.
“Reflections started with the Community Action
and Service Project at the School. The 6th Form students who chose
Performing Arts as their Community service project felt strongly
that they wanted to be involved in a project which focused on the
immediate community – the students at their own school.
This excited me because I recognised the real
impact it would make, not only for our diverse school community but
also because a project of that nature has the possibility of
sustainability and real impact.” (Lee Scholtz, director of the
project)
It involved the students in a series of
workshops which enabled them to feel more confident with their own
complex identities, and to develop a positive group identity which
would in turn support them in working towards a public performance.
The work began by looking at the different languages which are
spoken by the students in the group and encouraging them to teach
each other to use these.
The students then used drama, dance, music and
art to explore issues which were real for them in their lives. For
some, this included a family history of fleeing their native
country, perhaps leaving loved ones or friends behind; it might
have included experiences of racism or oppression; for all, it
included the frequently-alienating experience of trying to find
their place in a large secondary school.