When first thinking of Salisbury, it is all too easy to imagine a beautifully picturesque location, with a living gallery of John Constable landscapes and estates full of National Trust properties. In fact this is an area where the extremes of high wealth and considerable deprivation often live side by side.

Over three years as part of our project funded by Children & the Arts’ Start programme, we have delivered 312 workshops in 8 schools and a home education cluster, benefitting a total of 56 teaching staff of all levels and engaging 1,158 young people across years 1 to 9. Each child experienced a 10 month schedule of varied activities consisting of tours, workshops and live performances.

We offered clear cross-curricular activities; costume and set design supported the art curriculum, classical mask making extended to history and literacy was delivered through review writing, poetry composition and script writing. Even science was covered through exploration of light and sound waves in theatrical design and composition.

The main result of our work with Children & the Arts has been the huge increase of engaged and empowered young people now open to and excited by theatre. There has been an increased confidence in the arts delivered by newly enlightened & enthusiastic teachers. Although the programme has now finished, many of the schools are still engaged with Salisbury Playhouse. Teachers tell us, and young people demonstrate, that there have been leaps in young people’s confidence and self-esteem, considerable improvements in emotional literacy, teamwork and communication skills.

Young people involved were able to reinvent themselves through the arts. A girl whose parents never came to Parents’ Evening came to see her performance in the Studio because it was the one thing she had spent a year enthusing about. A creative career path was discovered for a young boy with Autism who designed and controlled the 32 lighting state changes in his school’s performance (it had been 31 changes till the morning of the final performance when he counted them and, not liking odd numbers, added one more).

Each drama workshop began by reminding young people that being creative meant that they couldn’t be wrong, that each young person has an amazing imagination and needs to learn to trust it. “Not being wrong” was a mantra that the young people remembered and would quote back to us. One of our schools had an OFSTED visit during our project and an Inspector asked one boy what his favourite lesson was. “Start!” he said. “What subject is that?” asked the puzzled Inspector. The boy thought carefully and then answered, “All of them”. Increasingly confused, the Inspector tried to get a further response, “Well, what is it exactly you learn in this lesson?”. The boy looked at his teacher and beamed, “Not being wrong!”.

By Mark Powell, Salisbury Playhouse