RSC CELEBRATES SHAKESPEARE’S BIRTHDAY IN SKEGNESS AND THE APPOINTMENT OF GEOFF BARTON TO THE BOARD
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The Royal Shakespeare Company will celebrate Shakespeare’s Birthday (23 April) in Skegness staging Romeo and Juliet in local schools and The Embassy Theatre. The performances are part of the new long-term partnership between the RSC, the area’s local leisure and culture trust, Magna Vitae and schools from the Greenwood Academies Trust.
James Brindle, Executive Director of Magna Vitae said:
‘This partnership will offer new perspectives on what young people here could only dream to achieve. It will be seismic social and educational change with the skills associated with the creative industries aligned to this coast for the first time’.
RSC partnerships use a combination of Shakespeare’s plays and teaching approaches inspired by the Company’s rehearsal room approaches to impact young people’s social, emotional and academic development, particularly their language development and confidence. The Company has 15 regional theatre partnerships involving 280 schools in areas of structural disadvantage across England.
The significant impact of this work is showcased through new RSC research, Time To Act, funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation. This ground-breaking study provides evidence that teaching Shakespeare using RSC approaches improves children’s literacy, as well as fostering key life and work skills such as communication, problem-solving and critical thinking (see notes to editors).
The research findings have led the RSC to work alongside Arts & Culture Finance (part of Nesta) to pilot a new approach to funding arts education. The model is based around social impact measures, an approach not previously used in the performing arts sector. The model relies on donors committing to payments only if pre-agreed impact targets are met. If successful, the pilot could create new ways of funding the arts sector’s work.
The RSC’s performances in Skegness are part of the Company’s First Encounters with Shakespeare 12-week tour which visits schools and theatres around England, made possible by Arts Council England funding. The production is one of the many ways the RSC works with young people and teachers as part of its Associate Schools Programme.
The visit to Skegness coincides with the appointment of Geoff Barton to the RSC’s Board. A former English teacher and Chair of the new Oracy Commission, which aims to build a blueprint for a ‘national entitlement’ across all stages of education in England, he recently stepped down as General Secretary of The Association of School & College Leaders. Geoff will join RSC Chair, Shriti Vadera, at Skegness Junior Academy on Shakespeare’s Birthday for the performance, workshop and Q&A with students from the schools.
Geoff Barton said:
‘I am delighted to be joining the RSC Board. Arts learning has a significant impact on young people’s language development and confidence, and the RSC’s work in this field is pioneering. I couldn’t be prouder to join the Board as a critical friend and as advocate and ambassador for their amazing work in bringing Shakespeare to more young people and their communities in times where his stories feel ever more urgent and relevant’.
Shriti Vadera, RSC Chair added:
‘We are delighted to welcome Geoff to the RSC Board. He was inspired by a brilliant English teacher as a child, he was a teacher himself for over 3 decades and has championed the voice of thousands of school and college leaders over the last seven years as General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. His knowledge, experience and passion will be a great asset to the RSC’s ground-breaking learning work with young people and teachers’.
ENDS
For further information contact: kate.evans@rsc.org.uk 07920 244434 or jo.hammond@rsc.org.uk
Notes to editors:
Time to Act: the study included a randomised control trial (RCT) with schools that had never worked with the RSC. Only teachers in the target group were given training on how to use RSC teaching approaches. After just 20 hours of teaching, the children were asked to produce two pieces of writing which were analysed against 42 verified measurements. Children in the target group outperformed their peers in 98% of them. See more TIME TO ACT.
The RSC has partnerships with 280 schools and 15 regional theatre partners all in areas of structural disadvantage across England. The expansion of RSC Learning activity to Coventry: The Belgrade Theatre; Peterborough: Ormiston Bushfield Academy; Corby: The Core at Corby Cube; Hartlepool: St. Cuthbert's Catholic Primary School, alongside Skegness was made possible by an Arts Council England touring grant, Paul Hamlyn Foundation endowment, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation award, and impact investment provided through Arts & Culture Finance within Nesta.
Geoff Barton was most recently General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, a trade union representing more than 25,000 educational leaders from all types of schools & colleges across the United Kingdom. He held this post for seven years. Prior to this, for fifteen years he was headteacher at King Edward VI School in Suffolk, an 11-18 comprehensive school of 1600 students.
Geoff attended Walton Comprehensive School in Stafford (1974-81); read English and Linguistics at Lancaster University (1981-84); then trained as a teacher at Leicester University (1984-5). He has taught in Leeds, York, and Suffolk. Geoff has written and edited more than 100 books on literature, grammar and literacy. He is a writer for many publications, and a regular commentator in the media on educational matters.
He is patron of the English & Media Centre, a Founding Fellow of the English Association, and for seven years was a trustee of the National Teaching Awards, celebrating the work of teachers and other staff working in education.
He was recently appointed as chair of the independent Commission on Oracy in Education.
About the RSC’s Associate Schools Programme
The RSC’s Associate Schools’ Programme (ASP) is our long-term partnership programme with 280 schools and 15 regional theatres across England. Open to any primary, secondary and special state-maintained school in England, the programme uses Shakespeare’s work and theatre-based teaching to improve life chances and learning outcomes for children and young people. With a particular focus on areas of socio-economic disadvantage, the ASP network is also used to enrich national research into the positive impact of the RSC’s work and arts learning interventions on children and young people.
About First Encounters: Romeo & Juliet - productions are aimed at new and younger audiences. Romeo and Juliet is directed by Trybe House Theatre Artistic Director, Philip J Morris using an abridged version of the script edited by Dramaturg, Robin Belfield. First Encounters: Romeo and Juliet opened in Leamington on 30 January and toured to Northampton, Corby, Norwich, Cornwall, Bradford, Newcastle upon Tyne, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Birmingham, Stratford-upon-Avon, Hull, Nottingham, Stoke-on-Trent and Skegness, during the week of Shakespeare’s Birthday celebrations, before culminating in Peterborough on the 26 April 2024. https://www.rsc.org.uk/first-encounters-romeo-and-juliet
Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) creates exceptional theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, London and around the world, performing plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, as well as commissioning a wide range of original work from contemporary writers. Our purpose is to ensure that Shakespeare – and theatre as a whole – is for everyone, and we do that by unlocking the power of his plays and live performance, and with our learning and education work throughout the UK and across the world.
Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. We have set out our strategic vision in Let’s Create that by 2030 we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish and where everyone of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences. We invest public money from Government and The National Lottery to help support the sector and to deliver this vision. www.artscouncil.org.uk.
Following the Covid-19 crisis, the Arts Council developed a £160 million Emergency Response Package, with nearly 90% coming from the National Lottery, for organisations and individuals needing support. We are also one of the bodies responsible for administering the Government’s unprecedented Culture Recovery Fund, of which we delivered over £1 billion to the sector in grants and loans. Find out more at www.artscouncil.org.uk/covid19.
The RSC is supported using public funding by Arts Council England
The work of the RSC is supported by the Culture Recovery Fund
The RSC is generously supported by RSC America
The tour of First Encounters: Romeo & Juliet is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England
Time to Act was funded through a grant from Paul Hamlyn Foundation
The Associate Schools programme is supported by Paul Hamlyn Foundation, GRoW @ Annenberg, LSEG Foundation, The Goldsmiths’ Company Charity, HDH Wills 1965 Charitable Trust and The Grimmitt Trust.
