Going Batty About Drama

Cara Holt, Ricky Williams and Rizwan Khan get to grips with the video equipment

Students at Springhill High School have gone BATS about drama, so much so that they are producing a video to show other young people how to produce and manage a performance from start to finish.

The Student Drama Group BATS (Barclays Art & Theatre Students) last year successfully secured a £10,000 grant from The Barclays New Futures Scheme, enabling them to devise an issue based production as part of a youth empowerment project.

The performance focused upon the world of work, and highlighted routes to employment, further education and training, and issues which young people face in after leaving school, all of which was devised, researched and managed by the BATS group, with the assistance of the schools Head of Performing Arts Liz Phillips and Drama Assistant Becky Fitton.

Students performed their production at Matthew Moss High School, Springhill High and in The Rochdale Exchange during summer 2003.

Now the project is in its final stage, and the students have called in the help of Middleton based Community Media Training Company Pride Media Association to assist them in documenting the project and providing other schools and youth groups with a step by step visual guide to enable and encourage others to research, produce, manage and promote productions of their own.

Students have been working with Pride Media to script, record and edit the video production that will be distributed to other schools and youth organisations locally. The video element of the project has given students the opportunity to develop skills in planning, producing and shooting a video documentary.