A social enterprise theatre company designs develops and delivers health, citizenship and environmental messages for organisations committed to social change
Resources
What is a 'Kids on Stage' programme?
Live Wire Productions 'Kids on Stage' resources deliver message based productions on stage, providing a long lasting impact on each and everyone of them for years to come.
Performed by children to other children, parents and invited guests designed so that the children taking part develop their skills and knowledge base and form positive attitudes.
A key engaging feature for the children is the flexible use of music, singing and dance as part of the cross-curricular aspect of the programme, making the learning experience fun, memorable and longlasting.
Kids on Stage' programmes are flexible so that teachers can customise the resource specifically to the needs of the class eg by adding children's ideas, introducing new dances, adding extra scenes and so on.
Parents family and friends also learn from the performers and proudly applause each of the children's efforts on the day! They also welcome the opportunity when available to meet discussing the issues with visiting specialists from the police, environmentalists and health professionals.
Background to 'Kids on Stage'
Live Wire Productions was commissioned to write their first 'Kids on Stage' programme in 1998 with its programme 'Snow Ice and the Seven Shorts' an alcohol awareness programme developed in collaboration with Orkney Health Board as part of the Drinkwise campaign.
This was closely followed by the Grampian Police commission of 'A Puff a Swallow and a Sniff' a drug awareness programme sponsored by ExxonMobil in Aberdeen. In 2001 a Scotland Against Drugs award funded the former to be developed as a musical production 'Hooked!' published in 2002, with a funded copy of the multimedia resource available for every school in Scotland.
In 2004 the company was commissioned by Aberdeen Joint Alcohol Drug Action team and sponsored by Shell UK Ltd to design, write and produce 'Uncomfortable Shoes', an emotional intelligence based 'Kids on Stage' multimedia, cross curricular resource. Over 4000 children have been directly involved in the development of this Curriculum for Excellence resource that is being delivered into schools in partnership with Grampian Police.
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PUBLISHED RESOURCES
| You will find curriculum links and song samples within individual resource information. | |
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'Uncomfortable Shoes' is an innovative, contemporary musical resource with a focus on empathy that encourages 10-14 year olds to consider what life might be like in someone else's shoes. |
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'Hooked!' is a resource for 10-14 year olds with a drug education theme. Divided in to 8 units, it is ideal for classroom use, or to produce a school assembly or a 60-minute rock musical. |
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'It's A Jungle Out There!' is an upbeat Internet Safety musical resource for upper primary children packed with catchy tunes. They'll soon be singing the safety rules!
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ONLINE RESOURCES
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OUTREACH PROGRAMME
As part of its quincentenary celebrations in 1995, the University of Aberdeen asked Live Wire Productions to develop 'Living History' characters depicting the lives and work of three of its most eminent scientists with a view to these characters touring primary schools in the North East of Scotland. William McGillivray, Patrick Copland and Patrick Dunn initially visited 60 primary schools, performing to approximately 1,800 pupils.
Between 1997 and 2001, Patrick Dunn was annually used by Aberdeen College of Education as part of their post graduate induction course to demonstrate to potential teachers the art of teaching and the value of drama as a teaching resource.
This profiles the way that Live Wire Productions designs and redesigns its programmes to suit the needs of specific clients and target audiences in an organic way.
The changing awareness of young people, society and education has meant that shows originally aimed at one target group have been changed to fit the needs of an entirely different audience profile as required, eg, 'Snow Ice and the Second Shorts', a pupil based show on the effects of alcohol on the body,
originally developed with S3/4 pupils in Orkney, has now become a drama workshop for P7 children. Also, 'Ooh! My Back Hurts!', a back care programme originally written for primary schools, was adapted to address safe handling problems in the workplace and metamorphosed into 'Back in 20 Minutes' with the emphasis on safe working practices in an office environment.
Outreach involves not only delivering the programme to where the audience is, but understanding and delivering what is required.
Mobile theatre is cost effective, apposite, customised and minimally disruptive.
This adaptability has meant the expansion of the Live Wire outreach programme from 60 performances of 3 shows to 1,800 people in 1995, to 233 performances of 23 shows to nearly 15,000 in 2005.
Alistair Harvey
Artistic Director