Resources for Teachers

Drama Worldbuilding is a creative pedagogy which activates collective inquiry and dialogic talk. The story worlds uses this approach to learning. Within Drama Worldbuilding

1. The drama is ‘framed’ by the drama practitioner to give skilful, flexible direction to the learning in response to the learners.
2. The drama involves children actively building and making shared imagined worlds with negotiated rules on their own terms. There are multiple possibilities within the same event.
3. The focus of the work is on dispositional learning and collective problem solving.
4. Children and practitioners use a range of creative expressions and have a thought journal for free writing and drawing.
5. The imaginary world is co-created to illuminate aspects of the participants’ lived experiences using a range of multi-modal literacies

Drama Worldbuilding moves through three phases:

1. Invitation or moving into the story
2. Exploration or moving through the story together and critically exploring multiple interpretations of the narrative
3. Discovery or moving beyond the story and enacting new narratives

 Children were ‘invited’ into the fiction by using inquiry questions such as What if…? or Let’s say… and What is possible?

Story is a useful way to connect curriculum knowledge with children’s localities and cultural experiences in meaningful ways. Drama Worldbuilding activates emotion in action and links to the relationship curriculum, personal, social and emotional learning, literacies (such as verbal and nonverbal communication and emotional inquiry- sometimes called oracy). Story can link to every area of the curriculum such as the humanities.

During the Bradford story exchange project, teachers and artists decided to use The Bradford Boar story as a local history topic which activated inquiry skills.

“Anyway, we were thinking about how Bradford and Cliff Wood was at the time, which is really familiar to them as well so it's like thinking about their culture on the doorstep sort of thing. Because Bradford is like their place, it's where they grew up. We thought about how it was the boars' home before anyone in the village. So, who were the villagers to go and chop down the trees and the habitats and obviously the boar was scared. So, we re-imagined the ending and thought how we can live with the things that we fear the most. And yesterday... Throughout the sessions we've kept getting these weird letters from this recluse that lives near to the wood and the recluse came to the village hall yesterday and the class hot-seated him and actually it was Cameron, well the teacher!!!!” (Teacher and artist quote)

You can access additional planning resources on our resource hub.

The 8 dispositions for Collective Creativity and Wellbeing are based on research using Drama Worldbuilding across 2 years in a Primary School. Dispositions are attitudes, mindsets, and values. The dispositions have been used by teachers nationally to assess and recognise creative/inquiry-based learning in relation to socio-emotional literacy and evaluate arts practices. Download the dispositions below