Ten schools from Wolverhampton, Telford, Dudley and Walsall participated in a cross curricular partnership with Oceana nightclub in Wolverhampton.
The project, led by Deansfield High School, a Creative Partnerships School of Creativity, is an outstanding example of multi-agency collaboration. Using the club as ‘the most exciting classroom in the West Midlands', students explored business and enterprise, event management, performing arts, PSHE and ICT.
With support from a raft of creative professionals including lighting jocks, rock musicians, choreographers and a local theatre in education company over a thousand year 10 students experienced educational events in the venue.
The club was used as a context to explore safe and responsible behaviour through participatory site specific drama tackling issues including knife crime, drug misuse and internet dating. To give an example of the workshops, West Midlands Police hosted Safe Night Out Workshops and professional theatre companies will be producing specific drama designed to trigger discussion and follow up work on these issues.
Over the space of a few months each of the schools taking part planned for the celebration event (which had full security, dress code and a programme of entertainment) which took place following the week of workshops at Oceana.
Participants
1200 people including pupils, teachers and families arrived to see a number of live acts performed by students from the ten schools.
Bands from each school performed. Prior to the event the schools ran band auditions and rehearsals to create a new song and a cover version to play live. This activity is linked to BTEC and GCSE Music.
There were also dance rehearsals (linked to Diploma and BTEC courses), design and promotion activities, music journalism and a number of pre-visits to explore enterprise and event management.
Partners
This is a great example of multi-agency collaboration and community cohesion. The local organisations involved in this project included:
