Celebrating Arts Award work in the North East featuring balletLORENT

In the first of our blogs in collaboration with our Bridge Organisations, we’re celebrating the work in the North East of England, with a case study of balletLORENT, which was selected to feature by Culture Bridge North East. James MacGillivray (Education and Projects Manager at balletLORENT) describes their community cast programmes, which give children the opportunity to dance alongside professionals whilst completing Arts Award Discover, and their creative activity packs which have enabled 660 children from primary schools across the UK to achieve Discover.

balletLORENT is the leading North East dance theatre company, and has been an Arts Award Centre since 2015, with staff trained to deliver Discover, Explore, Bronze and Silver level awards across a variety of different projects. We are also a Trinity Champion Centre 2022/23. 

We have delivered Arts Award through a variety of different projects, in schools and during holiday intensives. Our main achievements have been seen through delivery of our Community Cast Programmes; and a new Creative Activity Pack Project.

Community cast programmes

Since 2012, we have developed a unique model of creating dance theatre productions for family audiences with invited guest community casts of children from Newcastle and across the UK when on tour. They become integral creative members and are part of the evolution of our shows. We first meet children (6-10yrs) through creative dance workshops in local primary schools. From these workshops, we invite up to 20 children who have a natural instinct to move and dance to join us for an intensive period of rehearsal, and performances alongside our professional dancers in their local theatre. We are always inspired by their individual creativity, and how they make their roles their own. Most children will have never danced before, let alone been on a stage in front of large audiences.

In 2017, we began delivering Arts Award Discover alongside the community cast programmes, to complement this project and add an extra layer of value to an already life enhancing experience. The children learn about what the company does, the mechanics of each production, and our professional artists share stories of their own artistic training and journey.

239 children have achieved Arts Award Discover through this exciting performance programme, and related workshops. All are signposted to further arts activities in their local areas which may offer the opportunity to expand their new interest in dance and theatre.

Creative activity packs

During the pandemic, we devised a new Arts Award Discover project, in response to requests for creative activities that children could do at home, with limited parental supervision.

We established Creative Activity Packs that was an innovative and exciting new project for children to take part in. Each child watched balletLORENT’s film adaptation of ‘The Lost Happy Endings’. They then received their own activity pack with clear instructions of how they could achieve an Arts Award Discover and we delivered online sessions to support them achieve this award. Each pack included an activity book, craft materials, ideas to create their own dances, design and build their own model box set and character costumes. Children could research the artists we work with and learn how a show is put together. We included video links for children to learn dance warm-ups, choreography, and yoga, all delivered by our Creative Partners.

As lockdown restrictions lifted, we returned to schools to deliver creative dance workshops, and host celebration events for children to share what they had achieved.

‘I enjoyed being creative and I can’t wait to do another one.’ ‘This is the best day ever!’

‘Really, can we keep them?’

Children’s feedback

‘It gave them an opportunity to be creative, be successful and share their work. Finding out about all the people involved in making the production, has inspired many children to look into this as a future career. It was a once in a lifetime experience that they will never forget.’

Teacher, Whitehouse Primary

The children we work with were excited to have these creative opportunities and were inspired to explore more arts activities in their local areas. We worked hard to ensure all the resources provided were clear, engaging, inspiring, and complementary to the work the children did with us on stage, and in the classroom.

So far, 660 children from primary schools across the UK achieved Arts Award Discover through their participation in our Creative Activity Pack project.

We thoroughly enjoy working with children across the country, and are in awe of their creativity, and we are proud to be able to nurture their talents through these innovative performance and Arts Award projects.

balletLORENT’s ‘The Lost Happy Endings’ Arts Award Activity Book and Arts Log are available as part of our new, free-to-access collection of downloadable resources, focused on Discover. Access the Arts Award Discover resources.