The resource aims to support children to develop the tools to work together to form democratic communities. It invites children to think about difference, acceptance, trust and empathy through play.
In May 2016, Year 6 children from Gateway Academy, artist Adam James and theatre director Jamie Harper created a game about living and working together, using strategies form Nordic live action role-play (larp). Over the course of a week, the young people visit the Cockpit Theatre, formed groups, created community identities, devised maps and built group shelters. Following the sessions, the children were encouraged to reflect on their experiences of belonging and not belonging and think about how this relates to the transition to secondary school. Here is the Place can be read as a rehearsal for a more democratic form of school and society.
The resource contains a poster and leaflet designed as a group activity to encourage staff and children to work together to think about this transition through movement, mapping and making.
Here Is The Place is part of Moving Up – a series of commissions bringing together artists, teachers and children to reflect on the transition from primary to secondary school. The projects create temporary spaces where children can develop the tools to support one another and think about how schools could be better.
