Collaborative Outreach in Lockdown
Throughout the summer term, 2nd year students on Central’s Contemporary Performance Practice courses engaged with participants from around the world through their digitally delivered Collaborative Outreach projects.
The projects, an annual staple of the undergraduate Contemporary Performance Practice courses, typically take place up and down the country, as well as internationally, and include work with primary and secondary students, LGBTQ+ youth groups, young people in care, care leavers, carers and hospital patients.
This year, as lockdowns were announced across the UK and beyond as a result of the global coronavirus pandemic and many of Central’s students returned to their homes to study remotely, the quick thinking of students and course teams allowed for planned outreach activities to continue to take place online.
Globally, Central students worked digitally with teachers and young people between the ages of 6 and 16 in Mumbai, India and where, through their Creative Pedagogy unit, they developed education packs to support the work of teachers in India. They also collaborated with the Outreach Foundation Hillbrow Theatre Project in Johannesburg and established a creative exchange with young people in the village of Loxton, South Africa centered around the themes of climate change, health and wellbeing and using poetry, artwork, short stories, music and other creative forms.
In the United Kingdom, the student team engaged with the Proud Trust in Manchester City Centre, Manchester to provide LGBTQ+ young people living through the COVID crisis an opportunity to create new work.
Supporting the Greater Manchester Youth Network in Manchester, they created digital artefacts that offered a positive depiction of care-experienced young people which will be used as a training tool for social workers.
They worked with young people at the St. Levan School in Cornwall, and at the SEND specialist Nancealverne School in Penzance, Cornwall.
And together with Barnet Council’s safe and sustainable travel team, they created a suite of new, online road safety resources for primary school children in Barnet Council, London, aimed at helping Year 5 and Year 6 children to become safer and more independent travellers. You can read more about this project on the Road Safety GB website.
A virtual escape room and a shadow puppet performance were devised with young people from Body & Soul, London. With the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, London, a project incorporating games, activity packs and storytelling was developed for children to encourage environmental awareness and more positive interactions with the natual world.
Students formed collaborative playwriting projects with the Oldham Theatre Workshop in Manchester and Little Fish Theatre in London. They also worked with Camden Carers in London to create podcasts as part of a public campaign to raise awareness about unpaid carers.
And working with Jacksons Lane’s Together Project, students developed a unique letter-writing project to connect with Homes for Haringey tenants living in isolation in Haringey, London.
Congratulations to all the staff and students involved in the enormous achievement of ensuring that this important work was able to take place this year, even despite difficult and uncertain global circumstances.
You can read more about some of the Collaborative Outreach projects undertaken in 2020 in a special report from the Culture, Arts, Health and Wellbeing Alliance: How creativity and culture are supporting shielding and vulnerable people at home during Covid-19. Or listen to Dr Nicola Abraham, Dr Selina Busby, Dr Farokh Soltani, PhD candidate Gabriel Vivas-Martinez and 2nd year student Darius Gervinskas talk about collaborative outreach during lockdown on the Discover Central podcast.
If you’re interested in the work undertaken on Central’s BA (Hons) Contemporary Performance Practice courses and would like to join us as a student beginning in October 2020, we are still accepting applications for a small number of courses through clearing including Drama, Applied Theatre and Education, Performance Arts and Writing for Performance. Visit our clearing page now to find out more and register for an interview.