Theresa Dudeck, writer of 'Keith Johnstone a critical biography' is making a documentary film about Keith Johnstone and organised an on stage interview with the him and some to the original members of Theatre Machine.    The Royal Court Theatre was Keith's early theatrical home. He had been appointed Literary Manager of the Court, reading and selecting scripts, when Bill Gaskill invited him to run the writer's workshop. This was exactly 50years ago. The philosophy was not to talk if you could show or do - action over words. So when Edward Bond was struck with the idea that a chair could be a character on stage,  the writers had to stand up to demonstrate it.  John Arden, David Cregan, Edward Bond, and Ann Jellicoe were among the writer's in the group. It was an extraordinary reunion in the week that Ann died; Keith especially found it a poignant occasion. The writer's group had a huge influence on Ann, the writing of the Knack cam directly out of those workshops, and the idea of don't tell but show if you can was a big part of her directing as well as writing .  Alongside the writers group Keith started developing improvisation with actors and they became Theatre Machine. Here they discovered the significance of status to make performance more natural, and many of the games and rules such as yes..and that are still a fundamental part of impro came out of that time. Keith told us how much they laughed, and so they performed it to audiences to check that it wasn't just them that found it so amusing. The audiences laughed even more and louder. When Keith left England for Canada in the mid seventies, Theatre Machine continued performing and developing their own style. Roddy Maude Roxby has an big influence on their style, especially with his love of masks. Keith' work and his book Impro has changed theatre in perforce and training dramatically. There was no improvisation in drama schools then, now its an essential part of the actors training. 

In in 1985 when I first took over Colway Theatre from Ann, I ran ten day a course with Keith at Monkton Wilde in Dorset for a select group of  twenty actors, directors, writers and drama/theatre teachers. Among the group were Julian Crouch and Phelim McDermott, who were to go on to found Improbable Theatre.  Phelim McDermott.  Keith introduced 'The Life Game' for the first time on this course. When I ran to Phelim again at this event he told me he "vowed to put on "The Life Game' himself"  Twenty years later he made a serious theatre show of it and  toured it world wide . Improbable regularly return to it.  A collaborator of "Life Game" and Improbable is Lee Simpson who was also at the event. Co-incidently Lee told me he remembers me in Norfolk when I was a drama Advisor and he was still at school. His Drama teacher insisted that we meet me and Lee did an audition for me. Extraordinary he remembered after so many years. I was apparently helpful. 

It was amazing to spend a brief moment with Keith again. I do remember the ten days he taught at Monkton Wilde and how in the evenings he would come back to Rose Cottage, my house just a short walk away and we's talk about they day. I learnt more about teaching in those few days than I did in three years at Froebel. As We talked about teaching again but mostly about Ann.  Keith was genuinely heartbroken, they have been close friends for sixty years, he is unable to attend the funeral because he has a flight back to Canada booked, and he can't walk now unaided. As left I told Keith I would be the celebrant at Ann's funeral in a few days and whether he had anything he wanted to say about her. He didn't hesitate - "Yes" he said "Ann always wanted to be truthful, and she always was. Tell them that." I will.

​There were two distinct, equally significant, phases to the career of the playwright and director Ann Jellicoe, who has died aged 90. Both were rooted in her dedication to making good theatre of text, and good text of theatre. This led to a slightly conflicted attitude towards her profession that was only fully resolved when she broke clear of the Royal Court – where, in George Devine’s game-changing English Stage Company of the late 1950s, she was a much favoured and respected linchpin, writing two plays that are part of a legendary canon in Sloane Square, The Sport of My Mad Mother (1958) and The Knack (1962). The second of these made an unusual, quirky star of Rita Tushingham on stage and in Richard Lester’s “swinging London” 1965 screen version, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
 
It was only after leaving London for Lyme Regis, Dorset, in 1975 with her husband, the photographer Roger Mayne, and starting what was to become a highly influential career in community theatre that, for the first time, Jellicoe said: “I didn’t feel a divided person.” She wrote a play about the Monmouth rebellion, The Reckoning (1978), for the local comprehensive school, which was staged, with a cast of 80 amateurs and a few professionals, by the University of Exeter, with financial support from local trusts and charities, as well as the local council, which supplied a large banner and plenty of chairs.
In 1979 she set up the Colway Theatre Trust to further explore doing plays in the community, producing more than 40 large-scale pieces, including those of major playwrights – David Edgar, Howard Barker, Fay Weldon, Nick Darke – with a south-west of England historical connotation. Subjects included a female brewer’s confrontation with a crusading Dorchester vicar during the cholera epidemic of the 1850s (Edgar’s Entertaining Strangers) and social unrest in the post-Napoleonic industrial slump (Barker’s The Poor Man’s Friend). In 1985 she passed the baton to Jon Oram whose renamed Claque Theatre continues to evolve spectacular “living history” community epics, not only in Devon and Dorset but all over Britain.

​Jellicoe was born in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, and grew up there and in Saltburn on the north-east coast, attending Polam Hall school in Darlington and then Queen Margaret’s, Escrick Park, near York, before going to London and the Central School of Speech and Drama as the second world war ended. She was an unhappy child, her father, John Jellicoe, an officer in the armed forces, and mother, Frances (nee Henderson), having separated before she was two. The idea of being an actor was her solace from the age of four.
She took dancing lessons and supervised plays and charades throughout her school days. Between 1947 and 1951, after Central, she worked in London and the regions as an actor, stage manager and director. She made a study of the relationship between acting and theatre architecture before founding and directing the Cockpit theatre club to produce experiments on an open, Elizabethan-style stage, the first in London for 400 years.

​She was invited back to Central in 1953 as a teacher of acting. She stayed for three years while submitting plays, one of them, The Sport of My Mad Mother, to the Observer playwrights’ competition organised by Kenneth Tynan. The play, awarded third prize jointly with NF Simpson’s A Resounding Tinkle, featured a bunch of wild boys given to casual violence, a couple of outsiders and a spiritual leader who gives birth to the creative future. It was, said Tynan, a tour de force that belonged to no known category of theatre, but it was booed off by critics and public alike, and reluctantly withdrawn by Devine after only 14 performances.
Devine, who co-directed the play with Jellicoe, recognised in her, said the critic Irving Wardle, a tough professional competence as well as an experimental writing talent. He regarded himself as her “mad uncle” and invited her to join his writers’ group (along with Arnold Wesker, John Arden, Keith Johnstone and Wole Soyinka). She continued writing and also translating, first Ibsen’s Rosmersholm for Devine, starring Peggy Ashcroft and Eric Porter in 1959, and then, in the West End in 1961, Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, starring Margaret Leighton, Vanessa Redgrave and John Neville. Her 1964 translation (with Ariadne Nicolaeff) of Chekhov’s The Seagull for the English Shakespeare Company at the Queen’s was an unforgettable occasion, starring Devine as Dorn, Ashcroft as Arkadina, Peter Finch as Trigorin, Redgrave as Nina, and Peter McEnery as Konstantin.
By then, she had scored a bull’s-eye with The Knack, which she co-directed with Keith Johnstone; James Bolam, Julian Glover and Philip Locke were the three men circling Tushingham as the girl who comes to the house they share. The play was an international hit and was directed in New York by Mike Nichols. When William Gaskill took over as the Court’s artistic director in 1965, following Devine’s death, he opened with Jellicoe’s production of her own Shelley, a documentary-style biography of the poet wrestling with notions of goodness, the rejection of creative artists and the place of women – Shelley was portrayed as a misogynist. Described by one critic as “a strange, almost wilfully unappealing play”, it was followed by Simpson’s The Cresta Run and two other equally snubbed but embryonic classics – Edward Bond’s Saved and John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance.
After her first play bombed, Jellicoe had nonetheless been approached by the Girl Guides Association to write a spectacle for a cast of hundreds. In The Rising Generation, girls were urged to reject men and claim Shakespeare, Milton and Isaac Newton as female. Unsurprisingly, the Girl Guides rejected the play, but it surfaced briefly as a Sunday night show “without decor” at the Court in 1967 – with three actors and a mere 200 children – in what Jellicoe described as “the most successful first night I ever had”, thus leading her to think more along the lines of plays in the community.

She briefly took a more commercial tack in a West End comedy, The Giveaway (1968) at the Garrick, in which another plot of sexual siege-laying was wrapped in an absurdist scenario of a family who had won a 10-year supply of breakfast cereal contained in eight huge on-stage crates. After a break to have two children, she was invited back to the Court as literary manager, and directed there Paul Bailey’s A Worthy Guest (1974) as well as a series of children’s plays (“Jelliplays”), before decamping for good to Dorset with her family. She wrote several community plays for her new company and a fine practical handbook, Community Plays: How to Put Them On (1987). Her productions always had a core of professionals – usually the writer, director, composer and designer – but everything else was done by and with the community.
 
After stepping down from running the Colway Theatre Trust, she still wrote for the organisation as it widened its geographical net beyond the south-west: Changing Places (1992) was a play about suffrage in Woking, Surrey, and its local heroine, the composer Dame Ethel Smyth.
 
Her first marriage ended in divorce. Mayne, whom she married in 1962, died in 2014. She is survived by their daughter, Katkin, and son, Tom.
Michael Coveney
 
David Edgar writes: In 1984, I was invited to Lyme Regis, Dorset, to see Ann Jellicoe’s fourth community play, The Western Women. I’d known of this work but was unprepared for its overwhelming impact in practice. I was asked to be the writer on the next-but-one play, and accepted immediately.
Ann was aware of the sensitivities of the communities she worked with, but also of the likely politics of the playwrights she would attract. She told me that, if I had to make the play about wicked capitalists, it would be best if they came from out of town. In fact, we came up with a story of a titanic struggle between a pioneering woman brewer and a fundamentalist parson. Entertaining Strangers: A Play for Dorchester was performed in St Mary’s, the church the vicar founded, with more than 100 community actors.
 
The play was remounted at the National Theatre in 1987, with Judi Dench and Tim Pigott-Smith in the leads. The revival fed a myth that Ann’s method was essentially colonial, airlifting in her fancy theatrical friends to impose their vision on the community and move on. In fact, Dorchester is the best possible example of the long-term impact of the form: my play has been followed by six more, with a seventh (by Stephanie Dale) coming up. The Ansell family – three generations, participating in every Dorchester play so far – is a prime example of how Ann’s community plays changed lives.
 
• Patricia Ann Jellicoe, playwright and director, born 15 July 1927; died 31 August 2017

 March 1st Sunday
 I wrote to Peter Ackroyd’s agent Lucy Fawcett a few days ago and she called today to say that Peter has sent her a few ideas, but that I shouldn’t raise my hopes about him writing the play. “At least he’s nibbling’. Later in the day she forwarded his notes:
“Dear Jon: The nibbles...as per our conversation. Will await thoughts!  All best Lucy” 


and from Peter Ackroyd the following: 


“I had an idea for the float, which might lead to a play.
·       There are four centres of attention on the float.
·       A monk with four small children chanting out a history lesson.
·       A group of acrobats etcetera singing and dancing in the style of medieval pageants.
·       John Stow sitting at his desk, writing in a large book with a lamp for illumination.
·       Samuel Pepys reciting his diary for the Great Fire or similar.
·       The chanting, singing, Stow's muttering and Pepys declaiming all have the key word of "London", accompanied by a   drum beat that slowly grows louder.
That's my idea; If they don't like it that's fine.  If they do like it, it might lead to a play. Best, Peter.”

Well it’s a sure sign of interest, but he’s over committed – he’s about to publish his biography of Hitchcock and is on his third volume of the History of England. He would be a great choice as a chronicler of London, but we shall wait and see. I have another strong choice in mind but I replied straight away:

Lucy, It’s perfect can you say to Peter: I don’t need to hesitate - I do like it - it makes total sense to me - I’m delighted the great chroniclers of London are included in the image, and that all the historical periods, separated by time are nevertheless connected. Peter, in my mind, I’d include yourself on the float as our contemporary chronicler, that’s not an addition to your theatrical idea - just a fact. I hope we can talk further.  Thank you Lucy. You said time might be an issue for Peter.  I can only add that whilst we might want to encourage communication between the writer and the community we do respect the writer’s work ethic, style and process. How Peter connects with the community, which is what could most affect the time element, is negotiable. I only know that Peter would be a great choice.

 March 2nd Monday
Had an E.Mail from Tori, one half of a husband and wife team who run Bubble and Brit. They have over 15 years experience in arts, education, bespoke events, theatre, project management, team building, and film-making. If we can work with talented groups who have a proven record of work dedicated to the area so much the better for the project and the chances of sustainability.  They seem very excited by the prospect of the play so it seems imminently sensibly to meet up with them. They are currently doing some documentary work with residents they’ve worked the children and young people with on Middlesex street and for the national play day events 2012 -13. Their experience in film, visual arts, forum theatre, play and devising with children and young people, reminiscence, intergenerational work and so forth would be of great benefit to the play and lead in projects.

Have been looking at Marquees; the majority of tent companies hire out for big social events and weddings; there’s academy marquees who’s tents serve as temporary short/long term stores, there’s circus tent hires. In terms of sustainability there’s the more practical possibility of buying a tent for the Aldgate Square, something that can be used for numerous and continued events beyond the life of the play. In planning we need to consider the long-term benefits. The Square has the real potential of becoming the centre of the resident community, a sort of village green for Aldgate, wouldn’t that be great.
Meanwhile Fabio is setting up local soundings, the Portsoken Pioneers and display stalls in the Barbican and Artizan Libraries.

March 3rd Tuesday
Soundings comments are starting to come through on the web site. It never ceases to amaze me how a common theme develops out of the soundings, no matter how varied the individuals are by politics, age or culture, by age there’s a common thread emerges. It happens every time. Here there seems to be a common wish for disparate groups and cliques to come together and for everyone to find a collective voice and shared sense of place and history. Take a look at the comments.


 March 5th Thursday
We had two good meetings today, the first with Sean Gregory from the Barbican Centre, and the second with Rosie Farrer from Spice.  Sean Gregory is Director of Creative Learning at the Barbican Centre, and an inspiring musician and teacher of music in his own right. He was very positive about collaborating with us on the community play. The talent available in the City is immense and it really is where we need start looking to put together the right professional team. There really is a lot more discussion to be had about brining together and sharing the aspirations of the Barbican Centre and the play. The play should be looking to meet the agendas of those who are already positively serving the City. The Barbican has and is doing a lot of great work in the East End. Sean is to contact a Drumworks project and ask them to come and play at our public meeting on April 28th.   We’ll arrange another meeting in May, following the public vote, and will hopefully meet with others from the Barbican with a shared interest in collaborating.

 March 6th Friday
I had a good meeting with Rosie Farrer from Spice yesterday. Rosie clearly felt the same she E Mailed me and others on the Spice team the following: 
We had some fantastic discussions about the things going on locally and how we could link them all up to culminate in the most fantastic community play. I thought it would be useful to outline some of the things we discussed to you all and get your thoughts:
1. Time Credits - We had lots of ideas for how Time Credit earning and spending could be included in the play, both the development stages and the final performance. I'm going to draft this up into a proposal for the steering group to consider.
2. Pioneers - Jon is really open to working with the pioneers, he thought they might be a useful group to either feed into or be present on the steering committee. We also discussed the idea of them being involved in the public vote event. We thought it might be a good opportunity to start to involve others from the wider community with the pioneers, as well as starting to get people excited and recruited to the float. Caroline - how is the plan for the One Portsoken development coming along? Jon thought it would be useful for him to see this and for you to propose ideas for how the pioneers could be involved for the steering group to consider.
3. Providers - The next Portsoken Providers meeting will focus on the play and the float and planning their involvement and support for these. I'm going to schedule it in for after the public vote (May most likely) and ask Will and John to attend to help shape their involvement. This can then go back to the steering group for feedback. How does all of that sound as an approach? Rosie”
It all sounds good to me, but the more views the better. Rosie is a very dynamic, positive person. I’m looking forward to working with her and the Spice Team some more


March 9th Monday
There’s a growing idea of a photographic project, maybe in collaboration with the London Metropolitan Archives who are collecting photographs and oral history recordings. We are really looking at ways to bring the history of the City closer and in contrast to today’s world. Maybe photographs printed large and displayed on walls close by the original photographer or artists point of view, and tour maps of the outdoor exhibition. This is an example of what I call parallel projects. They serve a number of ends – meeting the objects of bringing communities together, involving people in the creative arts, evoking a sense of place and researching stories and themes for the play script, to name just a few. 


March 10th Tuesday
Partnerships are key in the Cityplay and as such we can’t ignore Toynbee Hall who have been serving the East End and the East side of the city for decades. Fabio is setting up a meeting with them. I’m especially interested in Toynbee Hall on a personal level. When I was and educational Drama Student at Froebel in the late sixties, I ran youth drama workshops in what was then The Curtain Theatre, now part of Toynbee Studios. There was a strong Youth Theatre there at the time, and the work they were doing was really innovative. These were the early days of educational drama and role-plays influenced by Brian Way and the early work of Dorothy Heathcote. The first sign that the Citypay is becoming a member of the community play family today with an E Mail from someone who marched in the Tunbridge Wells Lantern Parade last month: “Hi Jon. Good to see you briefly at the Lantern Parade and hope you are well. Someone mentioned to me about Claque doing something in the City of London. Just to say I have a friend, Jonathan Evens, who has just become the vicar at St Stephen Walbrook church, by Bank station - he is very creative and is an artist and poet. Just thought I would mention this if you wanted to create a link.”  


Claque (formerly Colway Theatre Trust) has been producing community plays since 1979, over fifty communities now. Many have developed links, I fully expect past community play participants to follow the progress of this play, we have some Tunbridge Wells cast coming to the public meeting on April 28th to encourage everyone to take part.

 The Aldgate Partnership are organising an event on 25th-26th April, the weekend before the public meeting, to celebrate the diversity of fashion in the area. The Aldgate partnership is working towards long-term regeneration of Aldgate; the square is part of their ongoing initiative to make it a better, more economically viable and socially sustainable community.  The festival is to draw attention to the area’s centuries-old fashion and textiles heritage – as found on streets such as Petticoat Lane and Fashion Street. It will use its rag trade roots as an impetus for people to think about where their clothes are made now, by whom and in what conditions. The idea is also to put Aldgate on the map as an upcoming hub of sustainable fashion, and provide opportunities for young enterprise and regeneration in the process. I think it would be great if the play could have a presence there.

 There’s also the Portsoken Float in the Lord Mayors show. We have to submit plans for May 1st… So ideas are welcome. There’s a lot to do between now and the end of April

March 11th Wednesday
Not unexpectedly I have a final communication from Peter Ackroyd’s Agent Lucy:

“Apologies for the silence since you emailed and I'm also sorry as I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint. I've been trying to follow up with Peter since your email and the difficulty of doing so speaks to the reason why I'll have to disappoint. We just can't see how we can get around the issue of his timetable. As you know I was anxious that with a community play there'd be calls upon his time beyond the writing of it but even with your kind assurances that you can work around his needs and availability, there still remains the time for him to write the play. After much to-ing and fro-ing these last few days and discussing with his book agent Sonia Land, I'm really sorry but we don't think there is the time.
I hate to have given you false hope with his initial ideas but I do hope you'll find someone who'll equally excite you all.  With best wishes, Lucy”

So much to do and so little time is the curse of the creative. Of course it’s disappointing, he was clearly interested but far better he’s honest about time; it would have served neither him nor us if he had attempted it with half measure. It is important that the community has the opportunity to work closely with a writer and have some contact and substantial input. It’s something Peter Ackroyd couldn’t have given us with his present workload.

March 17th Tuesday
Set up Committee Meeting Fabio, Kirsty reported progress and we got feedback from the committee members. Discussed the Public Meeting for the 28th in the John Cass School. The Drumworks project drummers are confirmed. Some of my Impro Group and community actors from the Kent Plays have agreed to come, hopefully in costume and help with meeting and greeting. I’m to prepare a storyboard of the community play process as part of the display. Keep the meeting short but explain the project in different but simple formats and prepare handouts. Similarly the volunteer forms should be gathering only basic information so we can follow up individuals post the meeting. I should like to see a Steering Committee form in May, even if it’s a smallish group. We can then do a talent survey and co-opt members so we have a good representation of skills.

19th March Thursday
Victor Callister  (City of London’s Assistant Director, Environmental Enhancement) took Fabio and I on a tour of the City, what a treat. We started in the Guildhall’s Great Hall, the seat of power in the City since the 12th century. This was an age when the Lord Mayor of London rivaled the monarch for influence and prestige, and it was here that the ruling merchant class held court, and made the laws and trading regulations that helped create London’s wealth. The Queen, even if only symbolically, has to get permission to enter the city. This magnificent medieval banqueting hall is a spectacular backdrop for royal occasions and entertaining visiting Heads of State and other dignitaries. The tour took in the Guildhall Yard marked round with the outline of the Roman amphitheater, the ruins of which are now deep below ground and accessible through the Art Gallery. In the Arts Gallery I was fascinated by the Victorian paintings of which there are many, but especially those I would term ‘problem pictures’ where who the characters are and what’s happening is open to interpretation and the imagination of the viewer. The Amphitheatre is a visual reminder of the age of the London and how much of it is buried beneath successive generations of buildings. London is like a problem picture with so many stories hidden beneath the surface.  We went on to Cheapside and the roof of the New One Change – the view of St Paul’s is staggering, another great power in the city. Passing through Mary le Bow, the bow bells rang, along Watling Street where you get a sense of the medieval streets and the overhanging buildings. We are then into Bank and the Royal Exchange, the old financial powerhouse. Then we are among the 21st century architectural giants of the financial city; but dip down Popes Head Ally the giants instantaneously disappear and you have stepped back into the days of Dickens. Through Leadenhall Market into Lime Street past Lloyds and the new Leadenhall building into Aldgate where Victor talked about the prospect of the new upcoming square. I love being shown round communities by different people, each takes you to different places, and even the places you revisit you see through the different perspectives and stories of your guide. Victor has worked for the redevelopment of the city for over 25 years and his contemporary take on the city is influenced and coloured by his sense of history. His perspective of London and his hopes for the square as an opportunity for the community to redefine and re-find itself feels like a template for what the play should be.

March 24th Tuesday
Much of the last few days has been rewriting the draft policy documents that are now all back from being reviewed, and consolidating all the information gathered to start making recommendations about the nature of the project, its potential aims and objectives, the timetable, budget and so forth. I want to get as much in place as possible not only for the public meeting on 28th but the first steering committee in May. The outreach and research doesn’t stop but the aim is to have a strong foundation of information and contacts and plan of direction for the steering committee to build on. Thinking too about the float for the Lord Mayors show celebrating and reflecting Portsoken with some references I hope to the play. I think we should use some of the upcoming soundings to get ideas in about that.

Fabio has sent me a Youtube link a short film about last years Lord’s Mayor’s show. I’m optimistic we can make a good showing this year.


March 26th Thursday
Our regular Thursday catch up and planning meeting at the Guildhall was followed up with a meeting with the Portsoken Pioneers, a group of Bangladeshi women, a very influential group in the Mansell Street Estate. We were there to talk about the play, but dealt more immediately with the Lord Mayor’s Float and got a positive response and some creative ideas. I was able to present some of the storyboard cards I’ve been working on for the public meeting display. I’ve basically taken photographs of past plays that illustrate the play process and turned them into a cartoon style through Photoshop and added speech bubbles and explanatory text.  

Fabio had met with the group last week and asked them why they had chosen to live in the City they said “nice place”
 “clean place”
 “market around the corner”
 “people similar to me, with similar clothes”  “mosque around the corner”. Today I asked how they would celebrate and they talked about the DAWAT (their celebrations of birthdays, weddings) Their ideas about the float for the Lord Mayor Show includes the red and green colors (Bengali flag) mingling with the Union flag of red white and blue; and the Bengali tiger.
 They would like to see their teenage children engage in the project and were going going to speak with them about their ideas for the Float


They are going to prepare pictures of their own place in Bangladesh. They thought the comparisons would be interesting. They talked about: Surma river and Dhaka mosque as their iconic landmarks.

I was pleased to get a comment on the website from the Imam, Muhannad Al-Hussaini. He is clearly in support of the project. His interest in music and understanding that the arts can bring communities together is more than encouraging.

March 30th Monday
I had an invitation from Shira Khatun, Health Co-ordinator for Portsoken based at Toynbee Hall to the showcasing event of the City’s Community First projects. The event took place in the Green Box on the Mansell Estate. I was pleased to find I am now coming across more and more people I’ve met before. I’m making friends. The Portsoken Pioneers were represented; there was a display of the gardening project and other grassroots projects that have received funding from the Community Development Fund (CDF). Community First is a national £80million government-funded initiative, running for four years until March 2015.  The aim of the programme is to help communities come together to identify their strengths and local priorities in order to plan for their future and become more resilient.  This funding has helped around a dozen community lead projects over the last 4 years to deliver for the community of Portsoken.  These are grassroots projects lead by local residents from, gardening to improving physical health and wellbeing to many others. They had a’ big brother’ room where groups could talk about their projects and visitors about their responses to the event. I was able to speak a little about the play, but more importantly meet other community activists. It was a good networking occasion.

Sanaz Begum, also from Toynbee who I’d met last month has sent me the results of a door-to-door survey; It’s a really useful collective view of residents about what they think of living in the city. Of course people have their concerns but I was impressed about how generally positive and optimistic people feel about living here.

 

 

 

Feb 3rd Tuesday
Preparations for the ‘Influencers meeting’ are progressing. Rebecca Southin is pulling together names of who to ask and an invitation has been designed and printed. ‘An ‘Influencer’s Meeting has been Jacquie’s for this project, and a good one it is. These early days depend on established ‘drivers and shakers’  (such as those on the set up committee) To call together more leaders of local groups, and others with political influence gives us an opportunity to get them ‘on-side’. If they in turn spread the word among encourage their groups and encourage them to the public meeting in April we have a better chance of getting the wide representation we want.  Meanwhile Fabio is seeking out groups who might hold Soundings for us

Feb 4th Wednesday
As a general rule Fabio, Kirsty and I are meeting on Thursdays in the Guildhall but everyone’s got a full ‘to do list’ of things so I’m as happy not meeting tomorrow if we’ve nothing specifically to discuss that e mails can’t do email. I’ve arranged a meeting at the Garrick Club - they have funded my work in the past and the Cityplay is perfect for them. Fabio is finding ‘interest groups’ to do soundings with but I’m thinking an open public sounding would be good – it might be something for Spice host? I could talk to volunteers at same time or it could be a volunteers night with sounding attached - whatever works.   I’m looking at the Mayors High street fund and searching out other local funding streams. I’ve set up Management page on the web site – it has a password so we can work on the feasibility report before sharing it publically. I’ve started filling in the funding, income and expenditure sections to get sense of the budget. Fabio and Kirsty are now both editors of the website.
The Cityplay website is developing more opportunities for visitors to share there thoughts and input information.

Feb 6th Friday
We’re working on a Cityplay postcard so that we can hand them out as we meet people, it explains who we are and what we’re about. It helps.

Feb 7th Saturday
This evening was the 5th or 6th Camden Road Lantern Parade; it’s now an annual feature in Tunbridge Well’s calendar. The first was a parallel project for the Vanishing Elephant, the community play I wrote for Camden Road. The first parade project aimed to not only to attract community involvement but draw attention to the fact that Camden Road had no decent street lighting, certainly not for the town’s most populated street of independent traders; It succeeded by drawing in close to 500 participants and in getting the attention of the Borough Council. Four months after the parade they installed new streetlights. Tonight a good 1,000 people were involved. It grows substantially each year; an example of one of the plays legacies.

Feb 9th Monday
Got a report from Fabio about where he’s at and the progress he’s making.
On Friday he’s at the "Buyer meeting" in St. John Cass school.  H’e been reading Rocket Science’s  "Aldgate cafè and pavilion consultation" from Caroline Masundire; it seems the second thing people would like to see most in the new space, after healthy food option, is "Activities such a play and events that bring the whole community together.” That’s before the play was ever discussed. That bodes well.  Fabio’s booked a sounding with "Portsoken Pioneers" (a Bangladeshi women’s group) for the 3rd of March at the GreenBox. As they are learning English Caroline Masundire, who runs it, has suggested a short very simple presentation with drawings and sketches more than words.

 Feb 12th Thursday
Rebecca has started negotiations with Sir John Cass School about having the April public meeting there. This is a good call. It’s a neutral space in religious, political, cultural terms. The only school on the City, it’s a line into the residents who live here. The school is of significant historical interest, but also central in the Aldgate project’s new square, sitting on the west side opposite St Botolph’s on the Eastside. It’s essential to get the school involved if we are to call this a ‘community play’.

Feb 13th Friday
Kirsty is setting up a public sounding at the Artizan Library sometime in early April. From the first day Jacquie Cambell put the idea of a Cityplay to me the name of Peter Ackroyd came to mind. Peter is the contemporary chronicler of London. His brilliant ‘London, a Biography’ is a must read. Discovering that the eastside of the city had been been the home of other great chroniclers on strengthened my belief that Peter Ackroyd would be a great choice as writer of the play. Everyone I’ve mentioned the idea too have almost as much enthusiasm for the idea as I do. To say that Peter Ackroyd is busy is an understatement so it’s a real long shot he’ll find time, but he’s so perfect a choice it would be negligent not to try. So I telephoned his agent today.

Feb 14th Saturday
Following a telephone conversation with Peter Ackroyd’s Literary and then Theatre agent. I sent a brief description of the project and principles of a community play. Lucy Fawcett, Peters Theatre Agent had said my request wasn’t something she could automatically say ‘No’ to so had agreed to pass on a written request. We can now only wait and see.  I read one of Peter Ackroyd’s essays, a manifesto for the city of London in which he expressed his hopes for developing community here, I paraphrase. I have fingers crossed he sees this as an opportunity to do just that.

Feb 16th Monday
We’ve been thinking about a venue for the play and the natural place is the new Aldgate Square itself. The square will have the prospect of being a ‘centre’ for the community, a place where residents can gather, meet, hold events, celebrate; as you would a village green. But building a square alone won’t do that, habits need to be broken, new traditions need to emerge. The play, in celebration of the square could promote the idea of the square as the new centre for the community activities and demonstrate a way to use it and during the process of finding and making the play, several ways of using it through parallel projects.  It could be for all things; markets, fairs, sporting activities, concerts, meeting-place, a site for protest or celebration.  

I’ve started looking at tents and Jacquie suggested a Spiegel Tent, something I’ve heard of but never seen. I contacted speiegetents for some sense of sizes, and cost. Crystal Palace 18mx21m total capacity of 300-350 isn’t big enough, that’s just double our potential cast. The Majestic 20m x 24m capacity 400 is extendable to 29m with a large foyer capacity 580, which is a more practical capacity. The Majestic has a diameter of 20m and a length of 24m. This spiegeltent has 16 alcoves of 6 persons each, the total capacity is 450 persons. The capacity for a dinner is 300 persons. The rental price for a period of 4 weekends with all its travel, set-up dismantling and insurance is about 37,000 euro. As well as being expensive it’s a too exotic, highly decorated venue of wood glass, seating cubicles and the like. We need to start with something more neutral and certainly cheaper. So I’m looking at alternatives. This is just a one-item glimpse of costing the play, which is just one part of the feasibility study.

Feb 17th Tuesday
Kirsty has had a fair few people that she’s talked to about the play suggesting us doing a documentary film around the play process, and that maybe we should film some of these early sessions; the meetings and soundings. She feels there is such a buzz around the play and that it would be a shame to miss these moments. She’s suggested doing a bit of filming at the influencers meeting on Thursday – not the whole thing but particularly interested in seeing the audiences reaction to what has happened in Tunbridge Wells; I’ve asked Paul Fulton who was in that play to come and talk about his experience.

Feb 19th Thursday
A really positive day started with our regular Thursday catch-up with Kirsty and Fabio, moved onto the monthly get together with the Set-Up Committee meeting and ended with a highly enthusiastic Influencers meeting. Come March we’ll be more focused on soundings and gathering local responses and ideas around the project, so we have to crash on with the feasibility questionnaire – gathering data and costing the play. We are discovering projects in the pipeline that could have a bearing on the choice of parallel project we plan including the Portsoken float for the Lord Mayors show, a photographic documentary project in Aldgate and a young people’s film making group working with Bubble an Brit.  The Set up committee have returned all the draft policies with comments and edits, so I’ll get them updated. We discussed the public meeting, the potential aims and objectives of the project, sponsorship and prepared for the Influencers. Much was said about the potential of the square around which we ran a small sounding exercise. I’ll add the committee’s comments to the web sites ‘what people are saying’
There’s a possible strong sponsorship deal to be made with a City development group. I’m to prepare a draft sponsorship package.
The influencers meeting in St Botolphs church was well attended by representatives of groups across the city and beyond. Rebecca had laid on some drinks and nibbles, Fabio had put together a display of community play and past project material I’d given him. Jacquie gave a moving introduction about why she wanted a play for the city, I presented a powerpoint talk about the process and Paul Fulton, a participant of a number of previous plays talked about his experience, especially the ‘legacy’ of these plays. There was a really good Q&A through which it became apparent there is a lot of enthusiasm for the project, and a determination from a lot of groups to get involved.     

Feb 20th Friday
Nice feedback from the team about the Influencers meeting
Dear all, it was a pleasure working with you yesterday.  Ready for the next step! Fabio

Dear All thank you so much for helping to make yesterday evening such a successful meeting.  Lots of good feedback and there are now around 20 new people buzzing with enthusiasm and telling others about the project.  Hurray!  Jon – your presentation was perfect and hit exactly the right note.  As Kirsty said to me last night, every time I hear it I learn something new.  Even better was your reaction to some of the questions, especially about this being your swansong.  Everyone was visibly and, in some cases, audibly, moved by what you said and how genuine and passionate you were.  Also, please pass on our thanks again to Paul, because he added real experience and authenticity.  The distinguishing between a community play and amateur drama was very important and beautifully done, as were his personal insights.  Spot on. Lydia, many thanks for dashing in and out of the rain at severe risk of hair frizz and helping to set things up.  Kirsty and Fabio – great engagement and support as always.  And Rebecca – a million thanks, as ever, just for making sure everything worked and went smoothly and making it all look seamless. What a team.  Jxxx
Encouragement is a great part of good leadership


An E Mail from Peter Ackroyd’s Agent, enough to say I think the door is opened a crack.  I’ve responded: “we wait with bated breath - it would mean so much to the city…”

 

4th January Sunday
 In the research I did over Christmas I came across Police reports and surveys on the various wards. They divide the city into North South East and West. The Eastern side includes the wards of Portsoken, Aldgate, Tower and Lime Street; It’s an interesting division in contemporary and historical terms. Deciding the exact community focus has been a question from early on and it must be decided at the next Set up Committee – it determines the range of the feasibility study.

7th January Thursday
Met with Kirsty (Leitch) and Fabio (Negro) in the Guildhall to talk through the  feasibility study questionnaire  about what we need to know and delegating tasks.  I had put together all the necessary draft documents over the Christmas break and Jacquie is going to send them out to relevant City Corporation staff members that have expertise in the various policy areas.  I’ll make amendments later based on their advice. I’ll also set up web pages on the community play website. Kirsty is looking at the Volunteer Guidelines. Fabio will work his way through the Feasibility questionnaire and get answers.  Not wanting to reinvent the wheel the first calls will be on previous studies including Rocket Science documents: Portsoken in Focus and Portsoken in Numbers

Kirsty is clearly going to be hands on with this project which I’m very pleased about. We’ve agreed to have regular weekly meetings on Thursday. I’m away for a week in the Lake District but Fabio has a lot to do in the meantime.

15th January Thursday
An E Mail from Kirsty – things are moving forward:
 Hope you are having a good break? Just dropping you a line to let you know things have been ticking over nicely. Fabio now has access to buildings, the ability to print and a city email account!  He has been doing a fair bit of research and we met with Fay* to get a head start on the wonderful world of businesses in the Aldgate area.  Just checking in to see whether you can attend the providers meeting on Monday? I think you said you could. We have been given a 30-minute slot to let the providers know about the play and introduce yourself and Fabio. Your presentation was great for the set-up committee was wondering if you could do a similar thing? Fabio has produced a mini feasibility study questionnaire for providers to pick their brains  
*Fay Canning (Aldgate Business partnership)

19th January Monday
Attended a Portsoken providers meeting in St Botolph Church with Fabio. It’s a really positive idea that service providers meet together to hear what each are doing and considering how they might join up and co-operate. Unusual too. Most district councils are to big to conceive a collective meeting.   There were service heads and representatives of volunteer service organisations, Toynbee Hall, the Church, City Gateway (youth services); Aldgate Partnership, John Cass School; Adult Learning, City Service commissioning and so forth. I was so impressed by the range of services and the imaginative projects they were engaged in. So many opportunities for the play to support work already happening, and potential soundings with youth groups, Bangladeshi women group, Jewish groups, and in school. This was a really productive meeting for us.  

22nd January Thursday
Have been doing a ton of reading: Peter Ackroyd’s Biography of London especially rewarding. Becoming aware of the strength of material. Spent much of the day in the Guidlhall Library. It’s almost overwhelming; in fact the the largest collection of books on the themes of a single city in the world. John Stow’s Survey of London is a classic and not possible to take out as it’s a reference library but I was thrilled to find a copy in a bookshop- still in print. Ackroyd and all previous chroniclers of London have depended on Stow’s work.  Four great chroniclers of London all lived in the East of the city: Chaucer (Aldgate) John Stow, (Lime Street) Samuel Pepys (Tower) and John Strype (Portsoken); what an extraordinary heritage.

29th January Thursday
The morning with Kirsty and Fabio in the Guildhall catching up on where we are at and next moves. Setting up Soundings is a priority, something we can pick up on following the providers meeting. We distributed names of people to connect with through February. Also started creating a list of people to invite to an Influencers meeting, an idea proposed by Jacquie. It will help us get a wide representation from the community to the public meeting. Lunch with Jacquie to prepare the afternoon meeting with the Set Up Committee which took place in the Green Box, literally containers stacked together to make a community facility, and small library and meeting rooms. The thrust of the meeting was clarifying the process, ratifying policies that had been returned. I forwarded the idea of ‘East City Play’ that seemed to make sense to people. I’ll expand on the idea on the blog pages. They also looked at the new web pages and discussed the interactive element. People can now volunteer, participate in an on-line sounding and contribute information to the feasibility questionnaire; hopefully add comments, ask questions and so forth.

We also talked through the Influencers meeting set for February 19th – I’ll prepare a presentation, display and bring someone from the Camden Road Play to talk about their play and legacy of CREATE. 

September 22nd  Monday 
I get an email from Jacquie Campbell the assistant director of housing and neighbourhoods for the City of London.  Would I be interested in discussing the idea of a community play for the City? More specifically, Portsoken a residential ward on the east side of the square mile. 

September 23rd Tuesday
I call. Jacquie Cambell.  She saw the Minehead play, Peter Terson’s Sailors Horse.; that must be 17 years ago. She was clearly impressed by it and had kept a community play in mind since then  and now thought it might be right and timely for Portsoken. There’s a regeneration programme underway part of which is a new square for Aldgate due to be complete sometime in the Summer of 2015. A play might be the right thing to mark the occasion. More significantly a play would help bring diverse residential communities together. Jacquie asked what the first step might be. I suggested a meeting with potential ‘drivers and shakers who I could talk about the process.  Following a positive outcome would be a three month study into it’s feasibility and co-opting  a set up committee to support the study and prepare for public meeting and a community vote. Before that it was decided Jacquie would  submit an internal application to fund the first phase. 

September 24th Thursday
I received a draft application for the Portsoken Community Play that Jacquie had put together to comment on or make amendments,i made a few suggestions but It’s a clear strong proposal . We will wait and see. She submitted it the same day.  Jacquie is clearly determined and outstandingly efficient. 

This could be more than an exciting project. This is where London started; offhand I can’t think of a mere square mile of land anywhere that, historically, has had such a significant influence on the world. 

September 30th Tuesday
An email from Jacquie apologising for the delay, she didn’t want to get started till funding was secured. It now is.  II’m somewhat amused by the apology ‘for the delay’  I’ve never known a four day turn around getting funding. Amazing. We decided a date for her to get a group of people together for me to meet. It’s all happened so fast I can’t make a date till later in October.

23rd October Friday
Jacquie has gathered a group together and with her PA Rebecca Southin has arranged a meeting with key people in Portsoken at the Artizan  Street Library. First person I meet is Steve Berwick who seems to run things at Artizan, and knows everyone a great character, and a a good start. He’s setting up the room. Jacquie and Rebecca arrive, friendly, enthusiastic, genuine - Jacquie seems very familiar I feel I know her from sometime past, can’t think where. People gather among them Caroline Masundire  Associate Director of Rocket Science  Kirsty Lietch - Community Development Officer  works with Jacquie but very involved in Spice a  community volunteer agency. Victor Callister Assistant Director  of Environment Enhancement for the City of London. He’s especially interested in developing and improving the quality of the spaces between building,  he’s working on the Aldgate regeneration programme, a hugely ambition project, the Aldgate Square is part of it. I gave a rundown on the process, takes about previous work and  Jacquie explained her reasoning for a play and her experience of Minehead. There was clearly a positive response. There were key representatives and a general feeling about how the play was relevant to their own programmes and that it should move forward. 

Took a tour of Portsoken including the residential estates, St Botolph’s church. Met Laura, the vicar  who is very positive and is open to the potential use of the crypt as design making space. If the play were to happen on the new square the crypt would make great dressing rooms as they lead  straight out onto it. The square will join up the church with Sir John Cass School, so their involvement will be key. Walked through Petticoat Lane which is in the Aldgate Ward. Thinking perhaps the project should be Aldgate and Portsoken, joining up two very distinctive, quite separate communities.

6th November Friday
London - went up to the office in the Barbican to meet with Jacquie and her PA Rebecca Southin. Passed Rebecca in the Aldgate Station selling poppies - there’s a real commitment to being in the community, engaging directly. She joined us later. We decided on a play project co-ordinator to work on the ground as it were collecting data, meeting people and setting up meetings and soundings. I’m to put together a job description. A three month post for three months (January to March 2015). Rebecca will post the adverts in house and among the volunteer service organisations - I think it best we keep the appointment local. It’s a short project period and having someone who has starting points will be helpful. We agreed an approach to getting a set up committee together, they will be responsible for overseeing the survey, advising on developing policies, timetables, aims and objects and recommendations and setting up and organising the public meeting in April at which point they’ll stand down to let community members form a steering committee; assuming we get a ‘yes’ vote that is - though we mustn’t assume anything at this point.  Jacquie is going to identify and invite people to join set up team and cll the first meeting to explain their role.

17th November Monday
An E Mail from Jacquie with a list of people she’s invited to be on the set-up committee: 
“ .You,  Me (OK, those two aren't exactly a triumph of my persuasive skills, but still...) Steve Berwick - the manager of both community centres, and the 'salt of the earth' chap you met at the first meeting. Laura Jorgensen, the vicar at St Botolphs, who you met when we went to the church, Kirsty Leitch, our Community Development Officer, Fay Canning, who co-ordinates a forum for the business community.  She's super-keen, loves the idea of the play and thinks we could definitely get sponsorship to help pay for a bespoke marquee, Tim Wilson, the Headmaster of Sir John Cass School.  He can't attend the first meeting but will send someone,  Caroline Masundire, who has done a lot of consultation and development work in the community. Hopefully  Victor Callister as well and someone from Community Gateway, the organisation that delivers all our youth work. That'll make 9, and when we get our outreach worker, it'll be 10, which seems about right".

21st November Friday
Good stuff re history of the area from Rebecca (Southin): 
" I have a bit more knowledge of the Shoreditch/ Brick Lane and Spitalfields areas which come under the Authority of Hackney & Tower Hamlets. You may find Cripplegate quiet interesting, which is in the City of London, I believe Hogarth’s ‘Gin Alley’ was based on this area in 1751. Bevis Marks Synagogue in Aldgate is also a good place to visit with interesting history. There is a plaque commemorating the life and death of Sir William Wallace, at St Bart’s – this was the site of his execution, where he was hung, drawn & quartered (a bit macabre!!)
To View Secret London  Spitalfields click Here  and The City of London click Here

I’ve started a History Time Line which I hope will prompt others to add more when we get it on line. We should create a website in the New Year or pages on communityplays.com.  

9th December Tuesday
Meeting with the set up committee. Gave them the feasibility questions and laid out the basic programme for the months up to April and the public meeting. Kirsty Leitch is administering the project co-ordinator applicants, interviews and appointment when its made. Very happy about that. Spice and Kirsty are experienced in volunteer management and have great networks across the community. The set up committee between them have wide experience and knowledge - the process couldn’t be in better shape. Interviews are set for December 19th. Ive put tougher a job brief and work schedule - I reckon its something like 29 days work spread over three months.  i’m to prepare draft policies to distribute to city officers to amend and ratify. The policies on Equal opportunities, Child and vulnerable adult protection, Volunteer  management Guidelines. Health and Safety, Constitution and Steering Committee and  Volunteer Team Briefs are all necessary to ensure clarity and best practice and are essential parts of grant application packages. 

19th December  Friday
Interviews and two especially good candidates. We will be appointing Fabio Negro who has experience in research and was very insightful about the aims and needs of the project. I was especially impressed about the research he’d done into Claque, the history and principles of community plays. He’s enthusiastic and very personable. He’ll be great. He will start in January. 

I’m feeling very optimistic about what next year will bring

I sense a huge dissatisfaction in a great many schools and some schools are in crisis. The problem is that the present education system doesn’t suit the contemporary world or the needs of children. This isn’t because teachers want it this way, it’s because it just is this way; it’s in the gene pool of education. Teachers are forced to teach within a system with inappropriate assumptions conceived during and for the industrial age. Public Education at the time was a revolutionary idea, never before had there been education paid for by taxation, compulsory for all and free at the point of delivery. However there were many cynics in positions of authority who thought it was a waste of time and money and doubted that working class children were capable of learning how to read and write. So the education system had built into it all kinds of assumptions about social capability. It was also designed for purpose, which is why, by the early 20th century, we ended up with a very broad base of elementary education, which everyone went to, followed by a secondary education which some people went to, and a university education that a very tiny minority went to. It was modelled on the industrial and economic needs of the age when we needed a broad base of people to do manual work, who would only need a rough basics of English and Maths; a smaller group of administrators, that’s what grammar schools were for; and an even smaller group to run the country and they were the ones who went to universities. That’s simplified but it’s basically what shaped the education system we still live with now.

By the time children reach the age of twelve their education is not only based on the interest of industrialisation their schools are based on factory lines: ringing bells, separated facilities, specialisation in separate subjects, educating children in batches. Why do we insist they go through the system by age category I can’t see that the most important thing we have in common is our age. Surely our most defining feature isn’t our date of manufacture. Some children are much better at certain things than others twice their age. Some individuals are also better at certain things at different times of the day, or more efficient in smaller groups, or function better at other activities alone. If we are interested in educating the individual, you can’t start with a production line mentality.

There remains the over-riding assumption that real intelligence is an aptitude for deductive reasoning, knowledge of the classics, in short academic ability. And so our education is driven by the perception that there are two types of people, academic and the non-academic, and if you’re academic you are by definition, smarter. The consequence of this is that many brilliant people think they are not because they are being judged against this particular view of intelligence. Whilst this educational model favours some people it has created distress in the lives of many more. I think it’s a massive problem.

If the industrial age, when our present education system was conceived, was a time of revolutionary change it is as nothing to what is happening now. The changes taking place globally now are without precedent in the history of the world. Technology is moving faster than any of us can imagine. In 1949 a headline article was published in an American magazine called popular mechanics made the astonishing prediction that future computers might weigh less than 1½ tons. Who then would have 30 years ago that we would have mobile phones with computing powers greater than that used to manage the Apollo space mission? Much of what the world will be like for our children in fifty years time is unimaginable but the impact on culture promises to be extraordinary.

We can take a stab at envisaging the world in thirty, fifty, sixty years by looking at some trends. Take work for instance. My Grandfather had a job for life, my father had two jobs in his lifetime, I’m one of the baby boomers and we will have had on average 3 or 4 jobs in our career by retirement age. When children who are starting school now reach retirement it’s predicted they will have worked in 18 – 25 different organisations. Soon companies will no longer be looking for committed people to train and manage for life, they will be looking to secure more and more people on short term contracts, working to expand key areas of their development planning then moving on as the company’s plans need change. It’s also worth flagging up that the number of graduates in 2009 still looking for jobs at the start of 2010 was just over 30% and that blue chip companies are increasingly saying that a first class degree is no longer a major criterion for employment selection. These changes alone means we can be certain of one thing, the world of our children will be even more uncertain than our own.

Whether this depresses you or not, whether you like it or not, or however desperately you may wish or hope for a reversal in these trends, the reality is it won’t happen. In many ways the reason the future feels so stark is that we are not prepared for it, it’s a world we would feel uncomfortable in. What’s crucial though is that it is a world in which our children need to feel comfortable and prepared for and whatever it holds there are certain skills they’ll need that aren’t being addressed fully right now. Above all the future is call to be flexible, adaptable to change. They will need to have huge amounts of confidence, and will need to hold onto and develop their natural creativity and inborn capacity for divergent thinking. Increasingly they will need to be emotionally self-aware have consummate social skills, be capable of building relationships quickly and effectively both face to face and ‘virtually’. The spirit of entrepreneurship will be vital, so they will need to be open to taking risks, embrace failure as a vital part of learning, know their strengths and weakness and how to utilize both
​
Government after government tinker and tweak the education system to respond to voter’s hopes for their children. One problem is they are trying to reform education to make it better version of what it was or is. In other words the challenge seems to be to do whatever it’s doing better to raise standards. And they say we have to raise standards as if it was some kind of break through. Yes really we should – because I haven’t come across an argument that persuades me we should lower them. But to transform education we have to think differently about human capacity. We have to get over this old concept of academic/non-academic and see it for what it is – a myth.
I am a huge advocate of working with groups. Collaboration is the stuff of groups and learning is a natural outcome of collaborating. The education system force schools to atomise people and separate them and judge them separately, and when we do that we form a disjunction between them and natural learning; it’s deeply embedded in the culture of our institutions. Why are we so hung up on a system that disconnects people when we are naturally and essentially social beings? There are a growing number of people who are pushing for an education built on different principles but it means a shift from an industrial metaphor of education to an organic one. Education shouldn’t be about uniformity but diversity. We should customise learning institutions for the individual not systematically for all, value utility but respect living vitality and its potential to be transformative. Whist there is a place for linear thinking we should give greater worth to creative multi optional thinking. Learning should be a fabulous adventure.

Whilst researching for the Hartfield Community Play, A.A. Milne’s home village, I read his autobiography; in it he writes about a time when he was a guest at a dinner of Preparatory School Headmasters:

They all, so it seemed, made speeches; and the burden of all their speeches was the obstructiveness of the parents to their beneficent labours. I had disclaimed any desire to make a speech, but by this time I wanted to. I told them that on this very evening, I had offered the alternatives of a proposition of Euclid’s or a chapter of Treasure Island as a bedtime story, and my own boy had chosen Euclid: "it was so much more fun". "All children”, I said (perhaps rashly) “are like that. There is nothing they are not eager to learn. And then we send them to your schools, and in two years, three years, four years, you have killed all their enthusiasm. At fifteen their own eagerness is to escape learning anything." It was not a popular speech.

But he’s right. I think I would have liked Alan Milne. I blame some teachers; I certainly don’t blame all of them. In fact one headmaster approached Milne after his speech and said he thought it absolutely true what he was saying…“ but why is it? What do we do? I’ve often wondered”.

As human beings we are bestowed with this astonishing gift of imagination. We have the capacity to bring to mind things that are not present, to hypothesize about things that have never been but could be. Every feature of human culture is the consequence of this facility. Our imagination has produced an astounding diversity of culture, of enterprise and innovation. As a species we speak 6,000 languages, we have produced Hamlet, Mozart, great symphonies, jazz, air travel, quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity; everything that exemplifies the rise of human culture. We can be extraordinary.
 
But I believe we systematically strangle this in-born ability of imagination in our children and in ourselves. I’m sure we don’t do it deliberately but we do it habitually and unthinkingly. I can’t imagine there’s a teacher anywhere who gets up in the morning thinking “Great now whose life shall I screw up today?” Nevertheless I think by assuming certain ideas about what it is to be educated we do screw up lives. I, among millions, have grown up with a system of public education that is dominated by a concept of economic usefulness. It’s inherent in the hierarchy of subjects in the school curriculum. Maths, Science and English are always deemed to be the most important, then the humanities and then the Arts, way down at the bottom. And with in the Arts there’s another hierarchy. Music and Art are always thought to be more important than dance and drama. There isn’t a school system anywhere that advocates systematically teaching dance everyday to every child in the way we require them to learn mathematics. Why? I’m not against mathematics, on the contrary but why is dance so underrated, children love to dance. The reason, quite simply, is that the government, and those who determine the curriculum,  see no economic point in it. There’s an economic judgement made in constructing the school curriculum. I’m sure like me you were steered away from things you were good at; towards things that other people advised would be of more value to you. So in effect our school curriculum is based on the assertion that there are two kinds of subjects useful ones, and useless ones and the useless ones fall away especially when money is tight.

There was survey carried out on 1,500 people that tested individual’s ability for divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to develop original and unique ideas and to envision multiple solutions to a problem; psychologist J.P. Guilford developed the concept in the 1950s and he saw it as a major component of creativity. Typical ‘test’ paper would be:
Below are five everyday objects. Think of as many different uses as you can for each

• A barrel
• A house brick
• A paper clip
• A tin of boot polish
• A blanket

There’s no time limit but people usually completed it within fifteen minutes.

A ‘dull’ person might come up with three answers; an average with ten, a brilliant divergent thinker might come up with twenty five, a genius with a fifty or more. Genius divergent thinkers are even prone to challenge the precepts of the question by asking – “Can the paper clip be twenty feet high?” “Can the brick be made of foam rubber?”

What percentage of people do you think scored at genius level? I should tell you one more thing about the group tested; they were all aged between 3 and 5 years old.
​
The most revealing aspect was that this was a longitudinal test; the same children were tested every five years, between 8 and 10, then 13 to 15. They finally tested 2,000 adults 25years and older as a control. How do you think the different groups performed?

​Here are the results:

3 to 5 year olds 98%
They retested again 5 years later
8 to 10 year olds 32%
You can possibly already see a trend here can’t you?
13 to 15 year olds 10%
They finally tested 20,000 adults, just once as a control.
25 year olds and over 2%

One would expect, or at least have some hope that we’d start not being very good and you get better as we get older. So it appears we are all born with the ability to think divergently and it mostly deteriorates. A lot has happened to these children as they’ve grown up; and one of the most important things that have happened to them is they have become educated.
To a large extent, this decline in divergent thinking has to be because children spend and great proportion of their schooling being told that there’s only one answer. The answer may well be at the back of the book, but you can’t look, that’s cheating; paradoxically in the real world it’s called research and ‘copying’ is called collaboration.