Musical and Dramatic Performances to local schools and organisations
Each year we invite, or visit, local schools and organisations to enjoy our performances. These could be performances by any of our age groups and have been enjoyed for many years by our local community.
We hosted Sandhurst Primary for an afternoon of food, acting, dancing and singing. It culminated with a performance to their parents. Our year 7/8 pupils worked on a Mary Poppins production and as part of this, helped our drama department deliver this event to the year 5 pupils from Sandhurst.
Aims
To allow our children the opportunity to perform more often and to different audiences.
To give opportunities for local pupils to enjoy dramatic performances and to join in with some musical numbers after the performance.
To allow the patients from the various local care homes and health centres to have an afternoon out or to enjoy a visit from our pupils.
Background
For a number of years now, residents at a local care home have been coming to our school to enjoy various performances by our pupils throughout the academic year.
A few years ago, Dulwich was also appraoched by a local state school about some of the keen drama club students coming along to see our senior musical. This led to other schools being invited.
It is now common practice for local schools and organisations to be invited to our performances.
Resources
This is usually mainly the time of our staff and pupils to put on these extra performances. Sometimes we also help with transport and so more staff hours and our minibuses are utilised.
This therefore means that both academic and the estates staff have to give some of their time to the planning and running of these extra performances.
Impact
The impact is tremendous. All the visiting pupils and adults enjoy themselves and often we add in a workshop after the performance, which means that in addition to the pupils gaining experience, visiting staff can also benefit from getting involved.
Our pupils also learn a great deal from these experiences, both in terms of meeting new people - often of varying ages - but also the benefits of performing to strangers, in safe environments.
Pupil Involvement
The performances that benefit the wider community over the year include all of our age range pupils: from 3-13 years inclusive.
Frequency
This is now embedded into our Creative Arts department throughout the school. Whenever we have a year group working on a performance, we look to invite the local community in to enjoy it.