some really important research that’s
been shared by the cultural Learning
Alliance here in the UK about the impact
on children and young people who have an
active engagement with the arts and
culture at school and this shows that
those children are three times more
likely to get a degree than children
from low-income families who haven’t had
that exposure and they’re the same group
of children they’re twice as likely to
volunteer and they’re 20% more likely to
vote as young adults this sort of impact
doesn’t surprise us at the Royal
Shakespeare family Royal Shakespeare
Company we see every day the impact that
Shakespeare can have in unlocking so
many things for so many different people
Shakespeare like all great artists can
help us understand ourselves understand
each other and understand the world in
which we live through our work we see
that not only can we get an appreciation
of those plays themselves but the plays
can become symbols of inclusion and
equality the Royal Shakespeare Company
as many of you will know one of the
world’s most famous theatre company is
very straightforward mission to present
the finest experiences of Shakespeare in
performance and share that with as many
people and as wide a range of people as
possible around the world but at the
very heart of what we do as well and the
purpose of this talk is a absolute
commitment to trying to make sure that
the first experience every child has of
Shakespeare is vivid that it’s
accessible and that it’s enjoyable we
knew it was going to work but we didn’t
know how great the effect was going to
be this is a comment from one of the
teachers we work with in schools we
undertake education work with hundreds
of thousands of children across the
country and have so much evidence of the
impact of that work the work involves
creative residences in schools
professional development for teachers
artists residences and performance
festivals for children and young people
and that work leads to improved
self-esteem
for children improves increases
aspiration levels and improves levels of
attainment the work itself comes from
our rehearsal room approach the same
approach we use to present our plays on
stage we use to inform our education
work and from that we’ve created our
manifesto stand up for Shakespeare see
it early see it live and be active stand
up for Shakespeare do it on your feet
say the words aloud and through this
work we find that very young children
even as young as four and five engage
with Shakespeare and find it fun they
love it
they don’t have a fear for it and
through through that work they develop a
relationship with the theatre and often
with impact far beyond their individual
yeah violence inspiring knowledgeable
wonderful mysterious dedicated
determined joyful traditionally
historically company Shakespeare because
people would have said that for in the
old times
slept for three hours like something has
to be amazing for you to be able to
stand there watch it for three hours
he’s helped me learn because of drama
let me act it out when you take that
moment they’ll have that feeling in
either whoa this is amazing
they’re not the same they’re all
different and the really interest but I
thought onto a Shakespeare
[Music]
I’m not good at history then one
actually came to this via telling
history I love it like at the beginning
of this year we believed that I’d be
here doing this and I’d be really into
reading Shakespeare I think that this is
a great place like you get to act you
get to get all your emotions out of you
that’s just the action part watching
people it’s like as emotions thrown at
you that makes you what do pushers out
but like the whole bowl into one play
every single player you can relate to
enjoy life that’s why it’s still
exciting and that’s why it always will
we work with teachers I say across the
country and one of the head teachers we
work with Brian Anderson stoke-on-trent
was very succinctly happens it happens
when we’re physically engaged when we’re
emotionally engaged and when we’re
intellectually engaged the rehearsal
room is of course a very physical space
it’s also a place of shared discovery of
shared exploration a place where actors
and the director work together to bring
the play alive and to create the world
of the play and we find that children
and young people respond incredibly well
to their active approach they love the
creation of a company they love the fact
that is us not me
they love that creation of the world of
imagining another another way of being
and they really enjoy the text engaging
with the text as part of the process and
part of that is in that process they
have to talk to each other they have to
think about what it all might mean how
it might work and that engagement is a
really crucial part of their learning
we often have children who say that in a
more conventional classroom environment
they’re not necessarily engaged it can
be a bit boring being spoken to watching
a film this way they say this is fun I’m
learning things for myself and the
emotional hook cause you saw a little in
the film can be really very important at
all as well we’re invited into a world
but invited into that world in a very
safe space children love to have the
chance to work walk in the shoes of the
characters to imagine what the children
that characters might feel and as they
say it helps with problems in life by
seeing the characters problems we
recently and we’re working in a school
and there was a new boy in the class
he’d recently joined the school he’d
he’d gone to live with his grandma and
the class were working on King Lear and
they were talking about lies and white
lies should Cordelia have told a lie to
say what her father wanted her to hear
that developed into a discussion about
conditional love and unconditional love
is there the group asked unconditional
love in families the group as a whole
was saying yes of course of course there
is this boy who hadn’t really engaged
with the class before said no I don’t
think there is my mum gave me away he
hadn’t had the chance to explore that
before he was able to do that with the
respect and the listening of his peers
because of the safe space of that
environment the intellectual challenge
is also significant using the original
text the original language again as
Brian said there’s something about this
that children really love we shouldn’t
think that children don’t want that
challenge they love the ambiguity of the
text they love the fact that maybe
nobody actually knows what it means that
there are a range of answers and
therefore and crucially that their idea
might be right as one chap was saying to
us he wasn’t sure how well he could
develop his reading he was being taught
English in a class outside the
mainstream with a group of diverse
educational needs he was studying and
The Tempest with us with this active
approach during this process his levels
of literacy his actual attainment levels
increased in steps and he was surprised
by this his teacher was surprised by it
so they had a chat about why it was
happening and he came back to the point
about engagement about fun but also
because they had space to think about
the ideas and explore the ideas that he
said you could try stuff out and see if
it was rubbish or not that gave him
confidence gave him a real chance to
develop he continued to do that and then
got back into the mainstream class for
his year this idea of people’s ideas
actually being valued it’s very powerful
children don’t say they get that in
every class sadly in every subject but
they really engage with it through this
process and it can have an impact on the
children that one least expects it to
and we think this is to do with the
whole process itself but also because of
the way Shakespeare uses words the
rhythm the use of
for and researchers at liverpool
university have given this study and
they’ve worked with volunteers who have
read a passage of shakespeare exactly as
written and then that same passage
translated into the contemporary
language and rather like this slide we
saw earlier of the brain responding to
maths they found that when people were
reading the shakespeare with the less
usual choice of words a surprising use
of sentences the brain was actually lit
up in a different way and we described
this effect when we see it in children
as being literally lit up by shakespeare
his experiences from across the country
as I say with a lot of schools a lot of
theatres and over 690 thousand students
so we have many examples of this impact
it’s really hard evidence as well as
every meaningful story and again the
University of Warwick have done some
research with us we have schools in what
we call our learning and performance
Network that over have worked with us
over a 10-year period very in-depth
approach to the work and as you can see
here they looked at attitudes to
Shakespeare and attitudes to school as
well and the blue control line you can
see it stays static the red line with
its upward trajectory or the group of
children that have been involved in this
approach this active approach to
learning Shakespeare and you can see in
both cases they’ve increased
significantly we call this if I can do
Shakespeare I can do anything affect
someone does Shakespeare they enjoy it
they find they’re good at it they have
that feeling of success they can then
apply that to something else that they
might think is hard they know they now
have a chance of achieving it beyond
this as well we find there’s incredible
impact in the community we find that
because there’s improvement in the
schools and the schools we work with
often those that have the least
engagement with cultural activity that
are in more challenging areas and once
we find we get the success of
individuals in the school success of
classes the schools work with other
schools and particularly if they they
work together on projects and they
engage the parents you can see a real
increase in profile of those schools in
the community again emphasizing the
point about confidence and self-esteem
this parents say there’s another life
out there and I want to be part of it we
work with the school in Margate with
another wonderful head teacher and they
found that through their their work the
parents were saying I now feel part of
the community and actually I feel part
of the country we went there the Royal
Shakespeare Company went into their
school in an area with generational
unemployment very low aspiration levels
we were there they came out to Stratford
they worked very visibly in the
community and parents picking up the
point at the start of this talk about
voting we’re saying now I feel in
franchise I understand my cultural
entitlement I am now going to vote and
be part of that it’s the same with
performance we see individual impact on
children when they perform the impact on
them the impact on their parents who
actually see potential being released
they hadn’t thought might be there
because the children come to see us
before
you have to imagine various seeds and
the Royal Shakespeare Company performing
here which the children have had a
chance to experience sometimes not only
did the children perform but we perform
they see us we perform with the children
last year we did a nationwide tour of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream we taught to
twelve cities across the country all the
regions and nations of the UK and when
we were there we worked with amateur
company’s adult amateur companies in
each place but he also worked with
schoolchildren we worked with five
hundred and eighty children and every
two nights the group of children on the
chair on the stage changed and we have
the most incredible feedback of what
that meant
emphasizing everything I’ve spoken about
so far we had one one boy in a school
who was on the verge of being excluded
but he wanted to be part of the project
so his head teacher said okay your last
chance you can be part of this the
project involved teaching and
approaching the schoolchildren in
exactly the same way as we did the
professional company the adult company
they had to focus they had to commit to
the project and they had to take
responsibility for the outcome of how
well the play was when we presented it
and this child came to all the
rehearsals he’d been a regular truant
err but he was regularly in school he
turned out to be a talented actor with a
wonderful singing voice even though
there wasn’t some music in the school
and he got to one of the performances
and the children were all just in the
wings waiting to come onstage and they
were getting quite frisky and excited
and one of the adult actors was thinking
oh goodness I’m going to have to do
something about this I’m going to have
to talk to them but low and behold this
this little chap stepped forward
looked at his peers said shush focus
this is our last chance to get it right
complete change for him
for himself for his engagement with his
peers his engagement with the school
after the performance there was a post
show talk and his dad spoke movingly he
was moved to tears by the change he’d
seen in his son
the head teacher spoke in the same way
incredible change and a year later that
child is still in school so for one boy
they’re just as everything else I’ve
spoken about Shakespeare changed
everything thank you [Applause]