Education agenda can be rewarding for creative industries

Aug 25 2008 By James Yarker, of Stan's Cafe theatre company

The four-year-olds had been watching, intrigued, as the nine-year-olds shot tiny stop-frame animations with the Lego models they had made.

When their elders left, the four-year-olds, unbidden, took over. I was shocked and delighted. Final proof that the filming technique which brings Wallace and Gromit to life, has the ability to engage kids.

Here at Stan’s Cafe we are not really animators. We are not even teachers; we are, in essence, a theatre company who use that description as an excuse to pursue whatever artistic project takes our fancy.

Our sense of enquiry and willingness to explore new ideas and learn alongside young people has led us into regular collaborations with schools.

In 2002, with no experience, we were challenged to make a stop-frame animation with pupils at Fox Hollies School, who were struggling with severe learning difficulties. Seeing how staff and pupils responded to the simple techniques and magical results was inspiring and opened the doors for us.

As the agenda for increased creativity in schools gained momentum, spearheaded by Creative Partnerships, we were increasingly invited to help teachers find innovative ways of teaching subjects not traditionally considered ripe for creativity. As a theatre company we were no longer being asked to work exclusively in drama lessons, whole schools were opening up to us.

Stop-frame animation had the potential to address time-based processes in many subjects, so we started experimenting.

In St Albans, a secondary school in Birmingham, we worked with the humanities department and Year Seven pupils on an animated history of our city. In Alleynes High School, Stone, we worked with a science teacher and Year 10 pupils, mixing live action with animation to tell the story of hydrocarbons.

Animation works in schools because of its flexibility. It tolerates cutting between different techniques and is reassuringly forgiving of enthusiastic, but occasionally ill-coordinated amateur artists. It can be focused on an individual, team or class activity.

Talented kids can go to town, but equally pushing a pencil case around a desk to make it come alive is fun.

Outside subject teaching, the process of creating works of art in all media can build key skills pupils need for life: teamwork, communication, planning, problem solving, control and perseverance.

Camcorders and laptops now mean creating animation can be much more dynamic than it once was, pupils can work fast and gain rapid rewards by seeing what they are making as they go along, which increases confidence and galvanises further efforts.

I would encourage all businesses to consider exploring how they can contribute to the education agenda. There are challenges to working in schools, mostly focused on logistics, but the rewards are great.

For us there is a financial reward, which is why Business Link in the West Midlands helps us with our marketing and diversification plans, but there is also an emotional and social reward in seeing kids engage, respond and flourish.

Teaching others what we do also helps us to think about what we do in a new way and how we express that to others.

The latest development in our animation work is to teach teachers to animate so they can become autonomous. We may be doing ourselves out of work, but we are not engaged in education to milk schools of money.

We want to make a difference and have fun and play new games. With thousands of schools in the region we are unlikely to run out of work soon and with four-year-olds now getting involved the market has just grown again.