From Today 1.1 million New York City students can access unique Prospero theatre ‘smartscripts.’ Here’s how this was made possible
Manhattan skyline from Brooklyn, New York City
Today sees a huge expansion of C&T’s Prospero online theatre education services for students and teachers in New York City. From Monday, all of NYC’s 1.1 million students have free access to a growing range of interactive learning materials - what we call ‘smartscripts’- including playwriting masterclasses, social isolation-friendly warm-ups and exercises as well as interactive projects and activities.
Facilitating this level of digital engagement is a huge undertaking. Our Prospero platform has the chance to benefit thousands of students who’s schools have now been closed for over two weeks and whose city is at the epicentre of America’s pandemic. However, this level of service has not come out of nowhere. Its foundations lay in a long-term partnership between C&T and New York City of Department of Education (NYCDOE).
Back in 2011, NYCDOE and C&T began discussions about how the two could collaborate. The starting point for this work was C&T’s model of ‘Networked Theatre’ – the idea that schools and young people around the world could use the internet as a virtual stage for collaboration and learning. C&T had already developed this model of practice in other countries including Kenya, Australia and Japan, so an expansion into New York could only offer tremendous synergies with existing work in other countries. Prospero, then in early development, was always seen as the means to achieving this end.
Over the next nine years this model of practice steadily expanded. Each year C&T created a new Networked Theatre Collaboration. These consisted of online drama stimulus materials, tutorials and web resources created in Prospero, addressing a common topic or theme that schools in places such as New York, Kenya, the UK, Austria could commonly engage. Schools were invited to apply to participate and teachers undertook specialist training with C&T, hosted by Carnegie Hall.
NYC students at work with Prospero in Carnegie Hall
Theatre was made, videos shared, websites curated and face-to-face, real-time sharing via video conferencing took place across the globe. Themes included migration, climate change and barriers to education (you can see some examples of our collaborative work on migration at our Push/Pull website). As a finale each year, hundreds of children took over Carnegie Hall for a day and shared their creativity and discoveries online with schools across the world. It was a great journey and NYCDOE’s faith in C&T and our shared vision for Prospero enabled this partnership to flourish.
Then, in the last three weeks, everything changed.
C&T were approaching the final phase of this year’s Networked Theatre Collaboration. Coronavirus cases were rising in Europe and America was slowly becoming aware of the rising threat. Suddenly, NYCDOE announced the citywide closure of all theatres and schools.
Quickly, the conversation between NYCDOE and C&T became about how the resources and materials we had created could be repurposed to support over a million students now being home educated, if at all.
Resources were quickly adapted for home users. Could tasks be adapted so they could be undertaken in self-isolation? How might we retain practical drama work, rather than reducing everything to handouts and worksheets? Was collaboration between so many remote learners possible? Of course, compromises needed to be made, but overwhelmingly all of these things proved possible. C&T’s Prospero platform is well suited for enabling all of these things. After all, C&T had been working in digital remote learning for ten years – these conditions were new, but the creative methods, techniques and technologies had been being developed for over a decade of practice.
Students in New York feeding back to young people in Nairobi, Kenya, through Prospero
Today these resources go live to schools. We’re looking forward to seeing what happens next. We’re sure New York City students will prove themselves more than up to the task.