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Shaping the Royal Shakespeare Company

Professor Joe Winston at the Centre for Education Studies leads this project, which aims to support the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) with its new schools programme.

The new Associated Schools Programme will work with partnership schools in socially deprived areas and where there is little access to cultural venues, in order to make Shakespeare accessible to young people.

Professor Winston and his team are working with four schools, which were selected as examples of existing RSC partnership where there has been a profound impact on teaching and learning. The intention is to help identify the characteristics of those schools which have enabled the partnership to thrive.

The researchers have started collecting qualitative data from the schools using intensive techniques from observation and interviews, to studying documentation.

The findings will enable the RSC to target its limited resources effectively when selecting schools for its new programme.

Project impact so far:

Results are being fed back to the RSC in real-time and are already shaping their policy and agenda.

  • In September the researchers completed a chapter for a new book on Education and Theatres. The chapter presents an analysis of the findings from two primary schools.

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