Down To Earth at Clapham Manor Primary School

On Monday 20th December we finished our Down To Earth project with A Rocha UK at Clapham Manor Primary School. We have travelled to 8 schools in all on this project: Featherstone Primary School, Hayes, North Primary School, Southall, Blair Peach Primary School, Ealing, MaCaulay Primary School, Clapham, Jubilee Primary School, Tulse Hill, Fenstanton Primary School, Tulse Hill, Dairy Meadow Primary School, Southall and Clapham Manor Primary School, Clapham. In Clapham Manor we worked with Year 5 rehearsing our scenes for the performance at the end of the day. After lunch we had time to talk about what we were doing in our own lives to help look after the planet. Jenny Greenhouse from A Rocha UK challenged the children not to throw away plastic bags.  She explained that the wind can carry them into our seas. They float on the surface of the water and many sea creatures like the Sea Turtle mistake them for jelly fish and  eat them. This has the affect of making the animals feel that they are full and so they stop feeding and starve to death.  Seeing this connection and how we can be culpable by our actions seemed to hit home to the young people. We challenged everyone to put their passion and desire to help the planet into the performance at the end of the day so that the audience could understand the message too. We had a wonderful audience from reception to year 2 who gave us lots of encouragement and smiles. It was nice to finish our 8 school tour with the full team of  Jenny Greenhouse and Pippa Tennent from A Rocha and my good self representing Scene Change Theatre. We have really enjoyed working together and have seen the power of combining drama with environmental issues. One thing that has been very noticeable throughout this tour is the level of knowledge children have on this subject. That bodes well for the future so long as our generation don't damage the earth beyond repair before they get a chance to do anything! We hope to display photo's from each of the 8 venues and will create a photo book as a record of the tour which can be viewed and ordered online. Thank you to  CMS and  West Hill Endowment Trust for their financial backing and support and  to A Rocha UK for a being a great partner organisation in this project.