Projects & Residencies

NBT have worked with Creative Partnerships (CP) since 2001 in Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham. Since 2005 work commenced with CP in Sheffield and Bradford, at Mossbrook and Our Lady of Victories Schools respectively.

Creative Partnerships project with Montagu Junior School

During the Spring and Summer 2005 Northern Ballet Theatre worked with 62 Year 5 pupils from Motagu Junior School, Mexborough on a narrative cross-curricular project based around a story with a multi-cultural theme. The project was funded through the Creative Partnership scheme in Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham. Click for more information on Creative Partnerships.

The focus of this project was to explore a multicultural text through creative music and dance work culminating in performance for friends and family. The text chosen was ‘The Hunter’ by Paul Geraghty which tells the story of Jamina who wants to be a hunter until she follows an orphaned baby elephant's cry and they get lost in the African bush. The text was explored in school lessons, including African printmaking, mask-making, and literacy.

Northern Ballet Theatre artists worked with the pupils for a total of seven days. The first four days included an introduction to dance and story telling through movement and involved a creative exploration around the themes in the story. The pupils then had time to further develop their creative dance/drama work with their class teacher during their PE lessons. Northern Ballet Theatre artists returned to the school for a further three days to help the pupils finalise their ideas and to put together a sharing of all the material created, which was performed for other pupils in the school and parents on the final afternoon of the project.

Pupils involved commented:

Overall I learned to be proud of yourself on stage and to try your best!

After we had performed on Friday I felt very proud of myself because I had tried my hardest.

The best part of this project was having fun and taking part.

I learnt a lot of ballet and also something I could use to make my own show for my family.

A Creative Partnership Project

Symbiosis 1

During this project an exciting exchange between science staff and PE/Drama staff was achieved through training sessions and meetings facilitated by NBT dance artist Sophie Alder. Staff courageously examined teaching methods for dance and science and each delivered part of the curriculum using each others' subjects: science staff using dance and PE/drama staff using science.

Symbiosis 2

This ambitious second stage, which included a creative lab and residency week, aimed to build a framework for the content of a highly imaginative interactive teaching resource to be developed during the autumn of 2007 with our partners at Leeds Metropolitan University.

Creative lab

Collaborating on the creative lab and residency week were a scientist from the Wellcome Trust, a digital artist Carolyn Mendelsohn, and composer Richard Coatman alongside school staff and NBT artists. Complex scientific concepts were explored creatively through the mediums of music, visual art and dance and a basic framework was created for both the residency and teaching resource.

The theoretical concepts involved in this part of the curriculum require a use of imagination to understand. By exploring them through dance, music and visual images, we hope the students will gain a greater understanding and experience a different way of learning.

Sophie Alder, Dance Education Officer

Residency & Performance

The week long residency at the NBT studios saw pupils from Year 9 dancing their way through the formation of the earth and galaxies, the speed of light, and the big bang theory.

“How come we learn more about science here then we do at school?” was one of the many comments from the students. Combining dance, visual images and projections, the pupils created an original piece which they performed at the School's Expressive Arts Evening.

Interactive Resource

The resource, in CD Rom / Web format, is aimed at teachers and students of dance and science and is due to be launched later in the year.

Bradford Girls Grammar School, and their partner Primary School, Lady Royd School contacted Northern Ballet Theatre with the wish to develop a partnership to aid the school in developing dance & to aid staff in developing creative teaching methods. This began with one day workshops and has now developed into a unique partnership with annual mini residencies that are tailored to meet the schools needs.

This has included:

• Working with all year 9/ Upper 4th pupils at Bradford Girls Grammar School on a two day cross curricular arts project based on themes of conflict, love & friendship, different identities and unity / solidarity from the story of Romeo & Juliet. All pupils were involved in half-day workshops in dance, music, art and drama.
• Working with 50 pupils from Bradford Girls Grammar School over five days in order to develop their classical and contemporary dance techniques and to work choreographically/creatively using the themes and choreographic devises from Northern Ballet Theatre's production of I Got Rhythm.
• Working with all year 9/ Upper 4th pupils at Bradford Girls Grammar School on a two day cross curricular arts project based on themes of opposites and contrast from the story of Dracula. The chosen themes were living and death / immortality, light and shadows, reality and imagination and attraction and repulsion.

At present we are looking forward to continuing to work with students across the whole school delivering residencies with year 10 and above and years 7,8 and 9. These will be based on Jardi Tancat and A Christmas Carol, and a series of workshops on The Three Musketeers, which will involve exploring themes and issues from the productions, learning repertoire and working creatively with both aspects.

Thinking Creatively: Dance Music and Science with White Laith Primary School

A Creative Action Research Award 2 with CAPE UK (January – February 2007)

Research focus

This detailed piece of action research focused on the transferability in pupils' behaviour from one curriculum area to another. The Year 6 teacher observed her pupils were hesitant to take risks, try things out, be curious and use their imagination in science lessons which inhibited their improvement in the subject. The initial focus was on the transferability risk taking and creative behaviour. However this focus shifted after the initial baseline assessment to include group working skills, as these were deemed essential for effective creative work.

The Project

For 5 weeks pupils took part in creative dance, music and science sessions which were related to the revision of science SATs through a story they developed themselves. The story included an alien who comes to earth and who has to learn about the earth in order to survive. Pupils acted, danced and made music in the impressive final piece (20 min) performed in front of an audience of fellow pupils, school governors and press.

Strategies

A range of strategies were adopted to collect data and observe pupils' progress:

• Pupils reflected on their creative behaviour and on their group working skills both at the end of each session (by for example placing themselves on an imaginary line) and in their written diaries.
• Artists and school staff reflected in detail on the behaviour and progress of each individual child in between sessions and developed strategies for challenging individuals, such as for example giving individual students specific ‘roles’ to play during group work.
• Four children were chosen as case studies which enabled supporting adults to focus their observations.
• A baseline activity at the start of the project was followed up with a repeated final activity. This allowed staff to make clear ‘before’ and ‘after’ observations.

Outcomes

A tremendous sense of excitement about learning was generated in combination with the sense of ownership over ‘their project’. Pupils made considerable improvement in their understanding of creativity and their ability to support each other's learning. Year 6 pupils became advocates for learning and there was a buzz in the school:

The children made huge gains from the work they did focussing on group work and new have a useful life skill … Having some control and ownership over what they learnt and how they did it made the children more accountable for their success of something they had created.

Year 6 teacher, final report

Both school staff and artists developed their practice considerably and project was deemed very successful for a range of different reasons. A full report will be available from www.capeuk.org.

All Saints' School, Mansfield

This unique two year project involved a strategic partnership between Northern Ballet Theatre, All Saints' School – a Performing Arts College and its six feeder Primary schools – The Holy Family School, St Philip Neri School, Holy Trinity School, St Patrick's School, St Joseph's School Shirebrook and St Joseph's School Boughton. In addition the project was supported by the Nottingham Royal Centre's community and outreach team.

This exciting project covered a two-year dance development programme and was based around four visits to Nottingham by Northern Ballet Theatre in Autumn 2004, Spring 2005, Autumn 2005 and Spring 2006.

The partnership included practical workshops at all the schools, theatre visits for the pupils to Northern Ballet Theatre productions at Nottingham Theatre Royal and Nottingham Royal Centre and performance opportunities for the schools involved – leading to a final community performance at the Royal Centre – with 130 young people. This work was underpinned by INSET training for all school staff to develop their dance teaching skills.

The partnership was funded through Northern Ballet Theatre's strategic venue touring review money, All Saints' School, Arts Council England funding and in kind support from the Royal Centre Nottingham.

Dance has been given a huge uplift in school. It was a wonderful experience for the school and for every child.

Teacher taking part

The pupils have really enjoyed being part of this project, they looked forward to the dance sessions in school. One individual who has poor concentration skills really improved as the project developed.

Teacher taking part

Wonderful experience of dance for each and every child. This whole project highlighted the huge positive potential and real depth of dance.

Barry Doran, Head of Holy Trinity Primary School

A wonderful initiative, which if it is going to develop to reap the rewards it deserves should be sustained in participating schools by further support from Northern Ballet Theatre.

Marie McLaffertly, St Joseph's Primary school Shirebrook.

Creative Partnerships Creative Action Research Award (CARA) with Pudsey Primrose Hill Primary School

The purpose of the Creative Action Research Awards (CARA) is to create and support partnerships that bring together creative practitioners and classroom teachers to develop, deliver and research the processes within or the impact of a creativity-focused project working with children and or young people in a school context.

Pudsey Primrose Hill Primary School, having worked with Northern Ballet Theatre on a number of occasions over a three-year period, approached us to discuss how best we could help improve the children's writing through using creative methods of learning. The resulting research project gave the school the chance to:

• explore how to access different styles of learning
• read and use a full story, instead of just parts of stories, so that the children felt a ‘wholeness’ in the work that they were doing
• use dance, music, drama and art to enthuse children about reading and writing

Northern Ballet Theatre artists worked with thirty-three year 3 and 4 pupils creatively in dance and music to explore Philip Pullman's, The Firework Makers Daughter over the course of six weeks. Sessions varied in length from half-day to full day sessions and the project culminated in two performances of the children's work so that the whole school, plus a number of parents of children in the class, were able to be involved, as an audience.

A practical teacher INSET afternoon was also planned into the project to assist the teachers in building up their confidence and skills in working creatively with music and dance.

The project gave the children involved a real boost in motivation to write, as it was made clear that their written work would be used as a basis to create movements and music. The pupils regularly brought in work they had written independently at home as well as work undertaken at school. Although there was no measurable impact on their optional SATs literacy results, the children produced wonderful varied written work and their motivation to write was increased considerably.

Schools in North East Leeds were invited to count to ten and jump on board this project that was designed to give key stage 2 pupils a fun, alternative way to practice their maths.

The days of dance explored the connection between dance and numbers. Participants worked with a pianist and dance teacher on number games and creative dances.

The sessions, held in January 2003, in 11 schools involved over 800 participants.

A super, really active and informative day, greatly enjoyed by us all. Thank you.

Teacher, Bardsey Primary School

The children thoroughly enjoyed the session. They learnt a lot of the basics of ballet in a fun situation.

Teacher, Shadwell Primary School

I didn't want to do ballet but I thought it was brilliant afterwards. Can we do it again?

Pupil, Bardsey Primary School

It broke down any preconceptions about ‘ballet’, especially for boys.

Teacher, Bardsey Primary School

You taught us both a lot about dancing, and it will come in useful when we try to be a pop band in the future.

Year 6 student, Wigton Moor Primary School

Dancing by numbers is part of Northern Ballet Theatre's commitment to working with Arts @ Leeds.

This [2007] was the second year in which we delivered this poetry and dance project in Leeds, combining strands of national curriculum dance, music and literacy, using poetry as a stimulus for creative dance workshops.

This year 6 primary schools took part in the project:

• Lower Wortley Primary School
• Hawksworth Wood Primary School
• Raynville Primary School
• Bramley St Peters Primary School
• Hunslet Moore Primary School
• Lawns Park Primary School

Studying the poems Body Language by L. Sissay, Highwayman by A. Noyes, and Jaberwocky by L. Carroll, pupils worked in groups to produce dance and music using rhythms and imagery from the poems. Resource packs to accompany the workshops allow schools to develop the work done during the workshops and have received highly positive feedback from staff and pupils.

The children developed a deeper understanding of the figurative language in the poem. They were also given many opportunities to create dances and show their understanding of the poem.

Using dance in this way enabled the children who weren't so strong academically, to be able to access poetry and literature, allowing them to excel in a different way. This made it possible for teachers to see different strengths in the children.

I think ‘Moving Words’ was an adventurous project to undertake as it involved dance, music and English, but it has been great to find a different way of engaging children in poetry. We are going to developed this project further, working more deeply on specific skills and targeting a wider range of schools.

Sophie Alder – teacher involved with Moving Words 2007.

Creative Partnerships Project with Mossbrook School

Mossbrook is a special needs primary school where the children have a whole range of disabilities and learning difficulties, the majority being autistic. The aim of the project was to introduce Brain Gym into the children’s daily routine and to find a way of working creatively using its principles. Buffy McClelland, a specialist in Brain Gym, was brought in to provide training for all staff and NBT Dance Artist Sophie Alder worked with her developing ideas. Brain Gym involves performing specific physical movements which open neurological pathways. Practicing co-ordinated movements have been found to improve memory and other learning skills.

During the project, Sophie worked with four classes spread across the whole school for 7 weeks, delivering weekly sessions with NBT pianist, Richard Kenwood-Herriott. Using ideas from Brain Gym, she developed tasks and exercises and together with Richard, found ways of using music to provide an additional stimulus and cues. Through these sessions the children developed greater body and spatial awareness, greater concentration, and began creating their own movement, as well as having a great deal of fun!

The first phase of the project, completed in June 2006 was very successful and identified areas of interest to develop for the next phase of the project. This will hopefully involve collaborating with another art form, working towards the production of movement sequences that the children have contributed towards choreographically and building the teachers skills to continue this work once the project has finished.

Project in 5 East Leeds Primary Schools on identifying and nurturing talent

Learning and Access worked with 5 primary schools from the Cross Gates area over a period of 6 months with the aim to increase teachers' confidence in identifying and nurturing talent in dance whilst increasing opportunities for young people to partake in high quality dance activity.

Two teacher inset sessions enabled teachers to gain knowledge, vocabulary and practical skills in structuring warm up, choosing and working with music and composition (how do you create a good dance piece with your class?). Following on from the first inset teachers were able to build a 6 week lesson plan, with a strong cross curricular element, which they then delivered to their year 5 and 6 classes.

Teachers received feedback on their dance teaching through a series of mentoring sessions that also formed a chance to develop a more thorough understanding of identification of talent and the different skills sets that play a part in dance. Many exciting new dance pieces were developed some based on poetry and stories from English lessons such as the Jabberwocky and Theseus and the Minotaur.

Six talented pupils from each school were chosen to take part in a performance project over four afternoons, the first of which included them observing professional Northern Ballet Theatre dancers at work in their daily rehearsals. Pupils received a challenging warm up and were encouraged by Dance Education Officer Caroline Burn to create their response to an image by Vincent van Gogh.

A final performance took place at Cross Gates primary school on the 6th of April 2006 and was attended by parents, head teachers and school governors. This project model was particularly effective and we keen to develop similar projects with other clusters of primary schools.

An excellent day – I feel so much more confident in teaching dance and identifying E & T. Can't believe how much I learnt in two days!

The most beneficial course I have ever attended – skills, practice, scheme of work and confidence building.

Really useful to have time to watch other children and discuss identification in the group. Good to realise children might be good at different aspects of dance – musicality, improvisation, etc.

‘Conflict’ – an eight day dance and music residency with year 9 at Crawshaw School

This was the third year that Northern Ballet Theatre artists took part in Breeze, Leeds Youth Festival. Having previously delivered this intensive residency with Garforth Community College and Royds Specialist Language College; in June 2006 it was the turn for 30 year 9 pupils from Crawshaw School in West Leeds.

Taking the themes of conflict, corruption and intrigue from Northern Ballet Theatre's production The Three Musketeers, students were able to explore their own ideas through dance and music.

The young dancers and musicians created their own original dance piece, accompanied and inspired by an inventive new music score. Composer Kate Pearson and dance artist Clare Parker facilitated young people to gain an in-depth experience of what it takes to create, structure and perfect new dance and music to performance level. Students even had a chance to visit a professional rehearsal of The Three Musketeers at NBT studios in West Park.

It was a really enjoyable experience, there should be more things like this. Can we do it next year?

It was amazing watching the professional ballet dancers rehearse and I enjoyed meeting new people.

The final piece was performed at The Carriage works on the 29th of June 2006, together with other Breeze pieces, in front of a packed out audience. Artists and teachers were particularly pleased with the way some students who are at risk of exclusion worked extremely well alongside more experienced peers and gained a lot from the work.

I have learnt to dance better and focus more.

I enjoyed learning new things and having the opportunity to work with others.

In November 2004 schools in Leeds were given the chance to become Lost Boys, Pirates and Peter Pan and experience Neverland in their school with this exciting project.

Over four days, four schools had the opportunity to work creatively on themes from Peter Pan and watch two company dancers perform excerpts from various ballets including a recently rehearsed section from Peter Pan and ask them questions.

Many of the children involved had never seen a ballet before and enjoyed meeting the dancers:

I really loved it.

Pupil, Meadowfields Primary School

It was good to see a professional dancer.

Pupil, Pudsey Primrose Hill Primary School

I did like meeting the dancers and seeing the costumes.

Pupil, Meadowfields Primary School

I enjoyed learning to fly.

Pupil, Meadowfields Primary School

This ambitious project involved dance degree students from Hull College with pupils from Kingswood High School and asylum seekers and refugees in Hull.

Throughout October and November Northern Ballet Theatre Artists led an imaginative exploration of the theme of ‘birds’ through music and dance supported by a local musician, Nahro Zagros. College students delivered creative sessions with the school pupils. After an exhausting but stimulating intensive weekend the performance material was gathered for a lively performance on Saturday the 13th of November at the stunning new theatre facilities at Hull College's Horncastle building. Young people enjoyed “meeting new people”, “making and learning new movements” and “dancing on stage”. Some comments from audience members and parents included:

Everyone was excellent.

Really impressive, professional, fun and moving.

Brilliant to see my son dancing with Northern Ballet Theatre dancers.

She has really enjoyed working on this, as have all the children we feel. Thank you so much.

Very impressive performance, I’m glad that these projects are happening in Hull.

We would like to thank all our partners at Hull College, Kingswood High School and ARKH (Asylum seekers, Refugees in Kingston upon Hull) and especially Barclay Bank for supporting the project.