Reflections

A drama-based project using performance, music, and art to explore issues of identity

Featured as an example of good practice in the report by Sir Keith Ajegbo, The Diversity and Citizenship Curriculum Review 2007, Reflections developed over three years to enable students in a large mixed secondary school, and eventually from feeder primary schools too, to explore issues of diversity. Groups from widely diverse heritages took part, predominantly White British and Pakistani Muslim, with a fairly high number of children from families of asylum seekers and refugees, as well as new immigrants from Eastern Europe some of whom lacked basic English skills. Some students came from poor families, some had faced racism and prejudice.

Reflections created a model of working together, devising and performing, which demonstrates how active citizenship can work – to explore problems and to promote cohesion, to cultivate good citizenship in a local and global community of diverse groups.

“Reflections started with the Community Action and Service Project at the School. The 6th Form students who chose Performing Arts as their Community service project felt strongly that they wanted to be involved in a project which focused on the immediate community – the students at their own school.

"This excited me because I recognised the real impact it would make, not only for our diverse school community but also because a project of that nature has the possibility of sustainability and real impact.”
(Lee Scholtz, director of the project)

It involved the students in a series of workshops which enabled them to feel more confident with their own complex identities, and to develop a positive group identity which would in turn support them in working towards a public performance. The work began by looking at the different languages which are spoken by the students in the group and encouraging them to teach each other to use these.

The students then used drama, dance, music and art to explore issues which were real for them in their lives. For some, this included a family history of fleeing their native country, perhaps leaving loved ones or friends behind; it might have included experiences of racism or oppression; for all, it included the frequently-alienating experience of trying to find their place in a large secondary school.