5.
Developing the Curriculum NACCCE report 79
Dancing the River Thames
During the autumn term, Green Candle Dance Company led a residency
in a Newham primary school. With the Year 6 class they started the
dance work with creative improvisation about the River Thames. When
the children were questioned about their perceptions of the river, they
were mostly negative and focused on its pollution and foul smell!
Through dance they were enabled to also consider its size, shape, flow
and currents. The class teacher was keen to link the dance work to other
areas of the curriculum topic ÔRiversÕ, so she asked the children to write
poems about the Thames, which could be used in dance. Everyone
involved was surprised and impressed by the content and richness of
descriptive language used. One of the poems was chosen as the stimulus
for creating duets, which were performed simultaneously by the whole
class to the accompaniment of their teacher speaking the poem. The
children were proud to perform this dance-poem, thus completing a
creative cycle of dance, poem, dance and poem in a way that was
satisfying to children and adults. This was a clear example of the cross-
fertilisation of ideas between artforms and the way both forms, in this case
poetry and dance, can be enhanced by the process and, in addition,
produce visible learning in other subjects such as English and Geography.
Information provided by Green Candle Dance Company
123. The arts are concerned with understanding, and expressing,
the qualities of human experiences. Through music, dance,
visual arts, drama and the rest, we try to give form to the
feelings and perceptions that move us most as human beings:
our experiences of love, grief, belonging, and isolation, and
all the currents of feeling that constitute our experience of
ourselves and of others. It is through the arts in all their
forms that young people experiment with and try to
articulate their deepest feelings and their own sense of
cultural identity and belonging. A balanced arts education has
essential roles in the creative and cultural development of
young people. First, the arts are essential to intellectual
development. We argued in Chapter Two that intelligence is
multifaceted. The arts illustrate this diversity and provide
practical ways of promoting it in all children. Second, the arts
provide the most natural processes for exploring and giving
form to personal feelings and emotions. The arts engage
feelings directly. There is a tendency to think of intellect and
emotion as distinct and separate. In many important ways
they are closely related. Work in the arts is not about
emotions in isolation from the intellect, but about how they
connect. Third, the arts are among the most vivid expressions
of human culture. To understand other cultures and ways of
seeing, we need to engage with their music, visual art, verbal
The arts are other ways of expressing
and communicating experiences,
feelings and ideas. Various materials,
instruments, tools, techniques and
skills are used to express and
communicate those feelings and ideas
in a creative form. In the creative arts
we are training children to look, see
and know. To observe fine detail and
to develop sensitivity, which remains
with them forever, can have a
profound effect on the way they view
the world and in some cases cause a
change in attitude. The creative arts
develop thinking and problem-
solving strategies in an enjoyable
way. This can enhance all other areas
of the curriculum.
Carol Traynor, Head, St. Boniface
RC Primary School, Salford
To communicate through the arts is
to convey an experience to others in
such a form that the experience is
actively recreated actively lived