A dramatic effect

“First I felt scared and shy but now I feel happy.” That comment from a Bradford student suggests a small move forward for a young person, but it is a major step when you are working with students who are new to the country, the language, the culture and customs. Getting those students to a stage of feeling comfortable and happy at school, while also tackling their basic skills gap is a key building block in helping them learn and engage across the curriculum.

As an Arts Council England (ACE) Bridge organisation, we have invested in an innovative partnership project using performing arts techniques to boost initial English language acquisition by newly arrived students. It helped Carlton Bolling College, a secondary school, adapt its curriculum and revise its student induction programme to meet those students’ needs. The project involved CapeUK, Freedom Studios theatre company (an ACE National Portfolio Organisation) and Bradford Council.

The project has been a wonderfully engaging and effective way of helping students with their language acquisition

As is the case in many areas across the country, Carlton Bolling had seen a rise in the numbers of newly arrived students. Many of these have had limited access to education and were at an early stage of learning English, a particular issue when students are admitted into Key Stage 4. As a group we wanted to explore how using performing arts techniques could help the college meet its priority aims of accelerating the progress of learners who are ‘New to English’ or have English as an additional language, as well as Year 7 students with below expected levels of English. In addition, we wanted to see the impact of the work on improving attendance and fostering positive attitudes to school.

We ran performing arts workshops with three different pupil groups over a six-month period. Two experienced theatre directors and youth theatre leaders were employed via Freedom Studios to lead them, using tried and tested performing arts techniques, although everything was a new experience for the pupils involved and activities were tailored to their needs. Carlton Bolling also got fully behind the work, with engagement through direct senior management support from the school’s Assistant Headteacher, Simon Murray, and the secondment of the Assistant Head of English, Gary Pang. This secondment provided Gary with an invaluable 'continuing professional development' opportunity, which is reaping further benefits for the school.

Three groups of students took part and each showed improvement beyond that of other students of a similar background and educational ability. In some cases, students improved their English Language by three levels, while others whose initial low English skills meant they could not be assessed, had reached Level 2 by the end of the six weeks of workshops and were moved into mainstream education. The school also reported improved attendance and students being assisted in their adaptation to being at a UK school. To enable long-term sustainability, the school has adapted its curriculum to include drama as an engagement tool in other subject areas. It has also incorporated drama as a key element with all newly arrived students who have a limited knowledge of English. Simon Murray said: “The project has been a wonderfully engaging and effective way of helping students with their language acquisition. It has also led to other changes in the curriculum so the students now have access to a broad range of arts-based activities such as music, art and film.”

There were longer-term benefits too for Freedom Studios, which has used learning from the project to adapt its work with students who have low English skills to use their own heritage and culture to help them understand how to “become a Bradford citizen”. Deborah Dickinson, Creative Producer at Freedom Studios, said they too had seen the progress students made through the work: “It was brilliant to see the students develop in confidence and self-esteem, and improve their ability to concentrate and co-operate with each other over the course of the project. It has had an enormous impact on the way we work with young people to enable them to tell their own stories and work together.”

For us, the work at Carlton Bolling also identified new ways of working to meet gaps in provision identified by our ‘Bridge’ reports into the arts, cultural and educational landscape in Yorkshire and the Humber. It has provided a vital insight into the impact of arts and culture on learning and offered ways to build up arts provision for young people in Bradford and build the capacity of the arts practitioners themselves to work with young people.

Sarah Mumford is Programme Director at CapeUK.
www.capeuk.org

Visit the website to find out more, watch videos produced about the project and read a full report of the work.