Drama Unlocked

This past week a group of our Key Stage 3 students have attended a four-day Drama course facilitated by Unlock Drama. This was hosted at the Civic Centre and the young people took the opportunity to engage with this important building, the home of Hillingdon Council. The first day saw our group of six students and three Skills Hub staff work together in a two team competition to complete a series of Drama games and teambuilding activities. These games included Dragons’ Den and Lava along with many others. The young people showed impressive ingenuity, and had great fun whilst developing their teamwork.

The remaining three days saw many more games played with Splat and Zip, Zap, Boing being particular favourites, but also saw a greater emphasis on Drama skills. These three days saw the young people both start and finish a Drama project with impressive results. They created a short play based around the theme of violence. This started with brainstorms of ‘What causes violence’ and ‘How does violence affect people’.

The young people created a short play where a pair of friends were getting ready for a party and discussing the chance of meeting someone who owed them money. This was followed by them meeting at the party and having a violent exchange. The final scene showed a split of the two groups, the victim and his friend and family in a hospital room and the perpetrators in a police station. The young people explored the subject with maturity beyond their years and were rightly proud of their production with all six receiving certificates for completing the course.

We are grateful to the Unlock Drama facilitators for helping the young people achieve so much in such a short space of time, and to the Civic Centre for hosting our group.