Today we announce a new partnership with Adobe, bringing digital and creative skills to the fore across one of the most internationally loved and timeless classroom topics: Shakespeare.

Our long-term partnership with the technology company will support teachers looking to inject additional digital skills and creativity into their classrooms. It will also help students develop the creative problem solving skills increasingly needed in the workplace.

This is a response to last year’s prediction by the World Economic Forum that nearly 50% of companies expect automation to reduce their full-time workforce by 2022, listing problem solving, critical thinking and creativity as the top three skills that children need to be taught for future success.

schoolchildren watching a show
School children watching a First Encounters with Shakespeare touring production
Photo by Sam Allard © RSC Browse and license our images

The partnership with Adobe runs throughout 2019 and beyond. It includes:

  • Our 2019 First Encounters with Shakespeare touring production for 7-13-year olds to be co-presented with Adobe, incorporating a digital learning experience through Adobe Spark and Creative Cloud.
  • Free teachers’ resources full of creative exercises and ideas that integrate Adobe’s creative tools including video, production, graphics and animation with our unique rehearsal room approach to teaching Shakespeare.

In Time to Listen, the RSC and Tate led study conducted by the University of Nottingham, 14-18-year olds reported that art subjects were the only places they were able to develop creatively, enhance their critical thinking and explore their own opinions and ideas.

Our Director of Education Jacqui O’Hanlon said: “The RSC works with thousands of teachers, children and schools up and down the country and has always known about the transformative and life-enhancing power of the arts. Increasingly research - including our own Time to Listen study – has shown the special power that arts subjects play in developing creativity in young people as well as improving well-being.”

Jacqui will be talking about the partnership with Adobe at the Bett education and technology show,  alongside Adobe's Mala Sharma - Vice President & General Manager of Creative Cloud, on Thursday.

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