A busy classroom. Primary pupils are sitting around a table cutting out pieces of paper and chatting.

Participate

Exploring our local community with Gorbals primary schools

24 Jul 2024

While we have been out of our building, our Participate team have been in residence in our two local primary schools – Blackfriars and St. Francis.

Here, Jack Tully (Community Drama Worker) tells us what they got up to for the spring term.

A workshop in a primary classroom. A man in a Citizens Theatre t-shirt is holding several pieces of paper. Two pupils are standing either side of him looking over his shoulders at what he is holding.

For the past 10 weeks we’ve spent Wednesday afternoons with the P7 classes at both Blackfriars and St Francis Primary Schools.

With not long until the theatre reopens, we’re all gearing up for our return to our brilliant and exciting new building. This has influenced our work with the pupils. Many of the kids attended a Christmas show at the Citizens Theatre when they were in P1. And whilst they have since been to see our work at Tramway, we wanted to ask them what they remembered about the old Citz and what the new building means to them and their community.

So, we spent the spring term looking at three main themes:

exploring our sense of self
exploring our local community (including the Citz)
exploring our school

This project was about the pupils sharing their thoughts, opinions and ideas. We wanted to learn about them, their local areas and their schools, from them – they were the experts!

Everyone was really engaged, inquisitive about each other’s work, focussed, interested and collaborative.

Teacher

A group of four primary pupils sitting at a table chatting and laughing. There is a large sheet of paper on the table in front of them with lots of handwriting in different colours. Another group of pupils is visible behind them.

The whole class worked with members of the Citizens Theatre Participate team. It was important to us that all children felt encouraged and able to contribute to each discussion, so we took influence from Split Britches and their Long Table approach.

You can read more about Long Table here.

Each week the pupils looked at one of the themes (self, community or school). This included taking part in themed games, activities and discussions. They were then invited to post photographs, draw pictures and write words on large scrolls of paper.

Ms Farrel from St Francis aptly named our version the ‘Ideas Tapestries’.

A collage featuring photos of spaces in a primary school.

A group of primary pupils standing arm in arm with their backs to the camera. They are looking at a large collage on the ground.

P7 had a chance to speak about and celebrate their language, families, and backgrounds.

Teacher

Working with the pupils gave us a good insight into how they see themselves, their community and the school. This will help us to reflect on how we, as a theatre and a creative organisation, can reintroduce ourselves to our neighbours when we return to our building.

We’ll be back at Blackfriars and St Francis Primary Schools next term and are already looking forward to it.