The Blood Stone Project Report

The project grew out of the Chol Theatre residency at Burleigh College and their production of The Ghost Lesson by Adam Strickland. The production's director, Dominic Rai, who works with young writers in the East End of London, conducted creative writing workshops with some of the year 10 students taking the themes of the production; race and culture, racism and identity as starting points. It became apparent during the day that these workshops were too short to do more than scratch the surface of the possibilities thrown up by the students, and we began to think of a programme of future work which would allow for some in-depth exploration.

It was decided to invite schools from diverse areas of the city and county to send a group of children, interested in theatre arts and developing their own scripts, to a four day workshop series lead by professional writers and directors. We chose the Y Theatre in Leicester as the venue for its central location. Four primary schools took up our invitation; Greenfield from Countesthorpe, Barleycroft from Beaumont Leys and Abbey and Charnwood from Leicester City. Two middle schools also participated; Soar Valley College and Limehurst High School.

At the suggestion of Dominic Rai, who was to lead the workshop events, we chose a work by a contemporary Asian children's writer as the basis for our improvisation work. We were captivated by the drama and atmosphere of The Blood Stone and the many themes within the story which would resonate with the young people.

We began our series of workshops in March 2004 after having prepared excerpts from the novel for the children to study with their teachers and a series of scenarios for them to think about. We also gained the services of Rani Moorthy of Rasa Theatre to be co-leader on the workshop days. The days were split between the 3 age groups, with days 1 & 3 being for the primary schools and days 2 & 4 for the middle schools.

By the time we began the workshops we had had contact with the novel's author Jamila Gavin. She was delighted to hear about the work we were doing and agreed to come to Leicester to meet the children in June. The children were very excited when they heard about this.

Our primary school days went well and the children mixed exceptionally well with one another, producing tableaux and poems,mini-scenes, character descriptions and drawings, some of which may be seen on the following pages. The staff from the schools who attended the days and who had taken part along with their students were very enthusiastic about what they had seen. Several said that the techniques employed by Dominic & Rani would be very useful to them in their literature lessons. Before they left we asked the schools to do some follow-up work with their groups before they came back in 3 weeks for their second session.

The first secondary school days also went very well. The students formed some very firm friendships during the sessions and worked very well together. We were able to do more in-depth work more quickly with this age group and they soon began to express their opinions and feelings towards the characters they had chosen to explore.

The children were all very enthusiastic about the work and keen to do more. When we reached the end of the four planned sessions it was apparent that there was a great deal more potential in the novel and the childrens resonse to it. We felt, for example that to add the dimension of music to the scenes would really add to the experience and give depth to the scenes the students had written. We decided to attempt to organise two further sessions and follow them with a meeting with Jamila at which we would show her the work the children had done and give them the opportunity to ask her about herself and her characters.