A Book of Portraits - School Workshops

School Workshops

As a company, delivering school workshops is an important part of our work and gives us the opportunity to form connections with the young people that will be involved in our events. During our workshops we introduce the characters of the current project and begin to let the young people into our creative world, educating them on its stories and customs related to folk culture and historic celebrations. After sharing some music and getting everyone involved, we usually separate into year groups and deliver fun and interactive age-appropriate workshops designed to learn more about the project and generate performance materials in either music, drama, dance or poetry. The material we create with the young people will then be performed by them during the event, allowing them to have a key role in the day and be fully involved in the performance.

Benefits to the students

Developing confidence and performance skills with the opportunity to perform alongside professional artists. Inspiring future arts participation / a career in the creative or cultural industries.

Teambuilding and communication skills advancement, through involvement in fun and active workshop activities.

Practically engaging with local history and folk culture, developing their understanding of local performance practices and community events.

Exploration of creative skills through arts education in music, drama, dance and poetry. Practical application of these skills to create performance material for a public arts event.

Local community and environment engagement. Taking part in an artistic event provides an opportunity to see their local area in an exciting new way, through the lens of storytelling and performance.

Workshop at Ferncumbe C of E Primary School.

Alex and Peter A Book of Portraits

The workshop was an opportunity to introduce the Key stage 2 pupils to the characters from A Book of Portraits and develop the material for the performance event. Each of the four years within Key stage 2 were paired with one of our characters, acting in the capacity of facilitator while retaining a sense of their character.

Year 3

Alex and Jamie worked with the Year 3 pupils to summon the Lavender Man before each pupil was invited to ask him questions about his life and nature of being. As the Lavender Man does not speak and communicates through his accordion, a toy accordion was used to allow pupils to converse with him, translated by Alex. It was then explained to the children that we would return in two weeks and would need their help with the ritual of summoning the Lavender Man involving lavender, holding hands, and humming round an old oak tree.

Year 4

The Fox assisted by Zahrah introduced himself to the Year 4 pupils before providing an array of trash he had collected for them to construct musical instruments from. These included cans and tubes to make drum kits; pots and bottles with rice and lentils to make shakers; and tubes and plastic bottles to make trumpets. The Fox then conducted some music with the class using their newly constructed instruments to be reperformed at the event.

Year 5

The Flower Maiden assisted by The Drummer and Zinnia introduced herself to the Year 5 pupils and began to explore creating new narratives including the characters from A Book of Portraits. These narratives were then developed into movement gestures associated with the various characters, for example the bobbing motif synonymous with The Flower Maiden’s dance.

Year 6

The Scholar assisted by Peter introduced herself to the Year 6 pupils before teaching them how to ring handbells to accompany a song to perform in the church. The song was about William Burdon’s Bells, a collection of handbells that had been gifted to the church by William. The song explored this man’s story that had been lost to time. The young people would go on to ring their bells in church on the day of the event.

School Performance event

The school-oriented performance of A Book of Portraits involving 120 pupils from Ferncumbe C of E Primary Key stage 2. Starting in the school playground, the pupils were divided into two groups with around 15 pupils from each year within a group. Lead by Alex and Peter the groups travelled their planed routes around the village looking for the characters. The pupils would come forward when recognising their character to perform the material they had worked on during the workshop day. The two groups followed the same route but on a staggered rotation allowing for the practicalities of the performance locations.

The premise of the school performance was that our magical self-playing music box had fallen off the back of the wagon and broken. Many of the pieces had fallen out the back and been lost around Hatton. We needed the pupils help to go out and find the characters and the parts to fix our music box for the evening’s public performance. This allowed us to tie the activities of the day to the evening. Children that attended both the school and evening performance had a sense of ownership over the evening’s activities that was hugely beneficial to the atmosphere.

Workshop at Priors Field Primary School.

Will We Impress Good Queen Bess? at Kenilworth Castle.

As part of our celebrations of Robert Dudley’s lavish theatrical spectacular of 1575 designed to woo Queen Elizabeth the 1st we called upon Priors Field Primary School. We delivered workshops at the school taking the pupils to Bard College and instructing them in the Elizabethan music, theatre, dance and poetry skills they would need to support us with our performance at the castle for Robert Dudley.

We started by introducing ourselves and the Elizabethan instruments we would be playing. After a couple of tunes and good sing along, we split into year groups to focus on one of the four art forms we were covering.

Year 3

Explored music through rhythm games and learning a traditional Elizabethan tune, Frog Went A-Courting, a simple traditional lilt to sing on the day.

Year 4

Explored poetry, writing their own epic poem to try and impress the Queen for Dudley. Pupils wrote the poem together contributing lines that followed the poetic structure. For the performance the final poem was collated and delivered by our Chief Bard with the pupils loudly delivering the group refrain throughout.

Year 5

Learned a traditional Elizabethan processional dance to La Bonnette. Led by Elizabethan dance specialist, Kath Waters. The pupils learned about the importance of dance in the reign of Elizabeth the 1st and performed the dance at the castle with live music.

Year 6

In this workshop, the class used storytelling, clowning and acting skills to create several short scenes amounting to ten minutes of drama based of the heroic knights of Kenilworth. Increasing confidence and practising character-building through physicality, collaborative storytelling, creative improvisation, and teamwork.

Group activities

After this all pupils took part in the learning of a traditional group dance as well constructing a paper hat that they wore for the performance. The hats related to some of the characters they had been introduced to from the original 1575 performance.

Feedback from staff

“The kids absolutely loved learning about all the different musical instruments and learning the dance. They also had a great time making the hats.”

“The children in Y3 really enjoyed the well planned creative activities, working together and learning historical facts about the castle. Thank you.”

School performance event

After arriving at the castle wearing their beautiful paper hats, Priors Field started their section of the performance event with a guitar recital organised by our very own Maarten Benschop and supported by our musicians. Each of the year groups then performed their material to their fellow pupils and public as we moved round the historic castle to different locations. We finished with laughter and excitement as we attempted the group dance all together in the centre of the castle courtyard.

Further workshops in 2025

Since then, we have gone on to do further workshops and the castle in partnership with English Heritage. For further information please get in contact. abookofportraits@outlook.com