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Tue 24 Jun
Gibbet Hill roadworksWe have been informed that there will be road closures on Gibbet Hill Road between Mon 21 July and Sat 6 Sept.
Thu 19 Jun
Warwick Art's Centre's Education Department awarded grant by Wellcome Trust
Support gained will enable Warwick Arts Centre to run an arts and science project with Coventry primary schools
Tue 10 Jun
Vote for Warwick Arts Centre!It's that time again, The Godiva Awards have launched and we want you to vote for us!
Mon 3 Mar
New music store now openRise has recently opened an outlet at Warwick Arts Centre.

Education at Warwick Arts Centre

Let’s Create and Pathways Projects 2003

The final week of the Summer term 2003 saw the Butterworth Hall packed with huge numbers of children and their families in the culmination of two large-scale projects that had been running in Coventry schools since the previous October.

Let's Create! – Theatre

Children enjoying the Let's Create project

Let’s Create was a year long project in four Willenhall primary schools with all the children in Key Stage 2 (8-11 years old). Fully funded by the Alan Edward Higgs Charity, this was the second version of the project which had run successfully the previous year in Wood End.

The project started in October 2002. Gill Nathanson and Bill Buffery from Multistory Theatre worked with Years 5 & 6 children to make theatre thematically linked to the Warwick Arts Centre Christmas show, The Boy who Fell into a Book. In the Spring term Catherine Cassidy of Topiary Dance Company worked with Years 3 & 4 to create dance linked to performances of Alpha, a dance work created especially for that age range by Random Dance Company.

To start off the Summer term work, the Coull Quartet visited the four schools for concert demonstrations and all the children in years 3 – 6 worked with musician Brendan Beales to create work that they brought to the Butterworth Hall at the end of June 2003.

Let's Create! has been a year’s worth of high artistic achievement that has energised the children and proved how imaginative and skilful they can be.

They have surprised themselves at how much they have achieved and proved to their teachers and families that they can create and perform to a very high standard.

Pathways – A Musical

Boy singing at a Pathways concert

A boy singing at the
Pathways concert

More Key Stage 2 children in another school this year were presented with a massive challenge – to write a full musical from scratch, perform it at Warwick Arts Centre and make a soundtrack CD. Funding again from the Alan Edward Higgs Charity matched by Peugeot and Arts & Business made this project possible.

Starting in October Musical Director Brendan Beales began building character and story work at the same time as encouraging the children at Aldermoor Farm Primary School to provide lyrics and melodies for potential songs.

By Christmas the piece was pretty well mapped out and by Easter the story, the script and the songs were all in place. The Summer term was a very concentrated period of rehearsal for the actors and all the singers (over 180 children altogether) and the staff of the school moved heaven and earth to ensure the children had all the rehearsal time and support they needed.

Two days after the Let’s Create concert the children came to the Butterworth Hall (all rigged up as a recording studio) to present the world premiere of their own work – Pathways. It was a triumph and the audience of other children and parents raised the roof in appreciation. The children performed like true professionals and now all have copies of the CD that they can keep forever.

To read more about the performance and see pictures from the day please click here.

These projects are just two of the many that Warwick Arts Centre makes for schools each year.