Week Eleven

Trapped inside the pages of a dusty old book, two tiny people are itching for adventure. If you find a book mysteriously moved or fallen from the shelves of your local library, you might wonder if they are near…

A Small Tale: A Teacher-Led Adventure is a brand new Punchdrunk Enrichment project for primary schools, led by the teacher in the classroom. It aims to inspire and develop imaginative teaching practices for literacy; placing the teacher at the centre of the creativity.

The teacher and their class read a mysterious old picture book about two mischievous and messy tiny people with a love of stories but when they return to the book the following day the pages are all blank, except for two sets of tiny footprints… and they discover that the tiny characters have escaped. Will the pupils be able to get them back to safety, before it’s too late?

Teachers are given all the tools to lead a creative learning project for their pupils which aims to ignite and inspire a passion for writing whilst raising standards in reading, speaking and listening.

I was absolutely delighted to be given the opportunity to sit in on a CPD workshop delivered by Tara Boland – associate enrichment director of Punchdrunk.

The workshop was attended by a roomful of Edinburgh primary school teachers from a range of schools who were all there to learn how to deliver the project for their classes back in their schools.

Tara was a very talented workshop leader, she held everyone’s attention perfectly, was humorous and engaging and really explained well how these projects work.

I have in the past created process drama style projects for primary schools, engaging young people in a narrative and using our journey through it to facilitate moments of learning but I have never achieved such a level of development in this kind of project.

The attention to detail is impeccable, with every moment of the young persons journey through the narrative completely thought through and then flawlessly explained to the class teachers in order to ensure the whole thing runs perfectly smoothly.

I think as an artist I am particularly interested in this kind of work, the integration of theatre and education is something that I am really passionate about and seeing how creative and engaging this project is has really inspired me to think about work made for this context.