Drawing to Drama offers children the chance to experience the art in the gallery including a workshop with the artist. Some schools may also take up the opportunity to explore the characters and places in the pictures through response-work in our drama studio or follow-up workshops back at school. Using the art on the walls as a stimulus, children are invited to develop their interest in visual arts through both their own artwork and an opportunity to create a dramatic response. The day at Half Moon can be followed-up with a series of classroom-based workshops to enable the children to work towards a presentation of their own artwork and a short performance based on their gallery visit.
We support this programme through a CPD for school staff which uses drama techniques to enhance children’s imaginative responses to visual artwork for literacy. This programme also supports our annual offer for Children’s Art Week (Mid-June each year).
For more information about the project and to discuss running something similar in your school, contact Androulla, Head of Creative Learning at Half Moon, via androulla@halfmoon.org.uk.
Case Study
The Drawing to Drama project enabled three classes of Year 4 children from Old Ford Primary School to create drama in response to art. The young people began with a trip to Half Moon to look at the art on the walls, have a shadow puppetry workshop with the artist and then explore their responses to the art in our drama studio.
Then in four weekly sessions back in school the children focused on art as an idea and the creation of stories that were inspired by the art, through the prisms of Circus, Shadow and Illustration. We introduced the young people to methods of group discussion as an opportunity for learning and expanding our ideas, working with images and sound as a means of expression and as a way to convey feeling, and finding new ways to tell stories.
The final sharing was a simple culmination of the work that we had done over the five-week project, including Circus and Shadow images and stories and storytelling through art.
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