Sweet Dreams for Oak Lodge

The Dream, a unique and exciting project as deaf and hearing actors work on stage together.
Oak Lodge is a school for deaf students in Wandsworth. Ten year 9 students from Oak Lodge along with ten Year 12 Theatre students from BRIT have been working together and creating a short version of Midsummer Night’s Dream called The Dream.On April 27th they performed their version of Midsummer Nights Dream on stage in the school's Obie theatre to a live audience.
The project was initiated by Leading edge Theatre manager Simon Stephens and the collaboration has involved deaf awareness workshops for both staff and students with workshops focussing on acting skills and Shakespeare at Oak Lodge School.

Full Marks for Oklahoma workshop

Students from St. Marks a community school based in Mitcham took part in a workshop lead by Musical Theatre and Dance Leading Edge manager Lorraine Woodley. They were supported by students from the cast of this year's year 13 Musical Theatre show Oklahoma. The students started off with a general dance technique and then where taken through the contextual themes of Oklahoma, moving on to focus talking about the style of choreography in relation to the musical number 'Farmer and the Cowmen'. The students from St Marks then learned a section of this choreography themselves helped by Brit Musical Theatre students and performed it at the end of the workshop.

The students finished their day by watching a performance of the show. An enjoyable end to an enjoyable and highly rewarding day.

'They thoroughly enjoyed participating in the workshop and having a go at the choreographed routines that they would later go on to see in the show. They thought that you were an amazing teacher and all now want the chance to go to the BRIT School when they are older.' Lucy Brown, St Marks

Gaining Ground with Melborn College

The BRIT school recently played host to a group of staff from Melbourn Village College in Cambridgeshire. The BRIT school will be supporting this school over the next two years. Melbourn's particular needs were to look at cross curriculum ideas and our vocational curriculum at Key stage 4 with a performing arts focus. Melbourn plan to build a new performing arts wing to their school and we have said that we would be keen for their students to come down here and see work and take part in workshops at the BRIT and in turn for our school to visit them. Our visitors had an enjoyable and informative day and left saying that it was so nice to feel so welcome, when they entered a lesson and class room they felt welcomed, wholeheartedly, by the staff and students.

Norwood Visit

The school entertained two visitors recently from Norwood school. Emma Thurstan, head of the faculty of Visual Art and Design and Ali Cowley from the art department. The faculty encompasses both Art and Technology and Emma and Ali wanted to gain a better idea of how things work at the BRIT school in the Technical Theatre Arts and Technology departments. They were keen to visit and look into ways of further improving their technology offer with particular reference to set and costume design.After a tour of the departments and talks with some of our students they enjoyed a performance of one of the Common Ground plays from the Theatre department in the Obie theatre. We now hope to discuss ideas for some collaborative work and also to develop stronger links between our departments at the the BRIT and Norwood.
And a word from Emma......... "We were both very inspired and both enjoyed talking to the set production students who we found to be so committed, enthusiastic and passionate about their course. Please can you pass on our thanks to the students. The performance was also really enjoyable to watch".

Fruity Festivities on BRIT FM

This Christmas was heralded in to the sound of the Pineapple club back on the airwaves on BRIT FM. This is part of an ongoing project initiated by media Leading Edge manager Jon Preston. Senior citizen's from the Pineapple club teamed up with students from another ongoing Leading Edge radio project from Saint Joseph's school in Beulah Hill to give us the Family Christmas show. Saint Joseph's is an all boys catholic school and the students that have been coming into the BRIT school to work on the project are all SENCO recommendations. The senior citizens from the Pineapple project are all from the local Afro Caribbean community and they were able to team up with the St Joseph's students to pass on the skills they have picked up running previous Pineapple club shows. It is a sign of the impact of the project that not only have St Joseph's remarked on the behavioural improvement of these students but they have now embarked on a similar project of their own involving some of their local senior citizens.

Visitors from the Oasis

Two members from the Oasis Academy in Bristol were visiting the BRIT school this week. They are looking to expand their delivery of performing arts through the school and wanted to have a look at the work and courses that the BRIT school runs. Our visitors spent quite a bit of their visit in the Technical Theatre/technology area of the school because they wanted to see how we integrate technology as a BTEC unit into all our KS4 performing arts strands. Leading Edge team member and head of Technology Chris Lewington was on hand to show them the department and some of the stage design work underway for the theatre departments common ground season.

New Expressions at Oak Lodge

Leading Edge dance and musical theatre specialist Lorraine Woodley has been working with Oak Lodge, a School for deaf students between the ages of 11 and 19. Lorraine says she first got in touch with them when she was asked to manage the BRIT school's Festival Week for Musical Theatre in 2008 and decided she would like the opening song to be ‘signed’.
Lorraine has been working with Oak Lodge teaching them choreography and technique. Lorraine says
" I thought that basic Laban notation symbols would be a good way to interact so I used that to help them learn a few basic skills, particularly how to communicate emotion through travel, signing and symbols".
At Oak Lodge the students have previously only copied people and this method allowed them to express themselves. " I wanted Oak Lodge to understand how important it is to have Dance education because physical expression is important in helping students develop their confidence and self esteem."