Dragons and Magic event with Cressida Cowell

GSAL was approached by a local independent bookshop in order to collaborate so that Cressida Cowell spoke at GSAL in June 2023. She also signed books sold through the bookshop. This interactive event involved a talk by Cressida Cowell about her inspirations, love of magic, and a lively Q&A session. The event took place in the primary school hall. We invited three schools to participate on-site and streamed the event to nearly 50 schools and over 100 classrooms. We were also given permission to record the event and post it on Vimeo so that partnerships schools could access it with a password for two months after the event.

Aims

To share an engaging and educational workshop with our partner primary schools for their pupils in Y5. This interactive event involved a talk by Cressida Cowell about her inspirations, love of magic, and a lively Q&A session.

To reach the maximum involvement from partnership schools, we needed to offer the following:

1.       An effective workshop facilitator who could inspire and engage pupils in the primary school hall as well as those live-streaming from their classrooms;

2.       A venue (the GSAL primary school hall) and transport (GSAL transport 70-seater bus) available to partnership schools if they chose to experience the workshop live; and

3.       Technical expertise (Actual Pixels) to deliver a successful life broadcast and recording that could be available afterwards on Vimeo.

Background

GSAL was approached by a local independent bookshop in order to collaborate so that Cressida Cowell spoke at GSAL and signed books sold through the bookshop.  

GSAL started offering life-streamed workshops during lockdown and realised this was a convenient way to reach more pupils with engaging and educational content relevant to their curriculum.

GSAL has been running workshops for primary schools for more than nine years and running live-streamed workshops since 2020.

Resources

Internet access in schools;

Videographer with multiple cameras (close and wide to maintain interest);

Zoom webinar to field questions and responses from the live virtual audience;

Non-teaching staff at GSAL and classroom teacher per class in remote audience;

Workshops offered for free.

Impact

Quantitative:

Over eighty pupils and seven teachers from three partnership school experienced the event on-site. Over 3,400 pupils from 114 classrooms across nearly 50 schools experienced the event via the live-stream. Over 20 classrooms later accessed the recorded video that was available for a limited time.

 

Qualitative:

Feedback via email expressed enthusiasm and appreciation for watching the live stream and for the link to the recording.

 

The bookshop owner was also appreciative of mentioning her shop to our partnership schools, as she sold many books through our event.

Pupil Involvement

Pupil watched the talk, and those on-site and in remote classrooms all had opportunities to ask questions. Those on-site also had the opportunity to have their photos taken with Cressida.

 

Most pupils were in Y5, though some schools included other school years.

Frequency

GSAL offers workshops with its partnership schools approximately once per term.