The hidden benefits of performing arts

Families Education The hidden benefits of performing arts by Linda Stone

Our daughter was 3 years old when we enrolled her in a performing arts holiday workshop – 5 mornings for a week, on her own, with children she’d never seen before, aged from 3 to 8 years.

When my husband dropped her off, he said: ‘I think we’ll get a phone call soon. She was the only little one there and there were loads of older children.’

No phone call came. In fact, quite the opposite. When our daughter came home at lunch time that day, her face glowing and eyes sparkling, her first words to me were: ‘Mummy, I LOVED it. Can I go tomorrow?”’

And that was it. 9 years later, she still attends a performing arts class once a week. During that time, she has sung, dance and acted her way through dozens of performances, formally and informally, with and without audiences, with and without been filmed or in costume. She’s taken LAMDA acting exams, LCM Musical Theatre exams, auditioned for scholarships and even, famously, stood up in front of 400 people in a packed church to sing a Christmas carol.

And, she has done the large majority of this without feeling nervous about what she was doing. Perhaps because she started at such a young age.

Maybe your first reaction to this tale is: ‘My child could never do that.’ ‘Your daughter must have been a naturally confident child, who was always going to want to perform,’ I hear you say. It’s true that she’d always shown a fondness for role play, singing and acting out fairy stories. And seemed to love to dress up and ‘accessorise.’ And we ran with that. But, truthfully, I think most children love these things if given the opportunity to nurture them.

Interestingly, although our daughter was comfortable being away from us, she was never all that comfortable interacting with other children. In fact, she was quite reserved.

I sincerely believe that starting performing arts classes at such a young age, on the back of her love of storytelling, developed her confidence and ability to perform, rather than capitalising on some innate confidence she already had.

Participating in performing arts has benefited her personal growth and education in unprecedented ways.

Drama teaches children how to get inside the head of others. By “being a character” they learn to empathise. And this is a highly valuable skill for making friends during childhood, for understanding the deeper

Mummy, I LOVED it. Can I go tomorrow?

context of books and even world situations and for developing emotional intelligence. Performing arts has helped our daughter make friends by teaching her how important it is to consider others feelings and needs and to be kind.

Her performing arts classes involve considerable trial and error. In rehearsals, lines are forgotten, mashed up and fluffed in all sorts of ways. Songs are sung at the wrong pitch or note. Dancers fall into each other and trip over their own feet. And it is all fun, everyone laughs and it is all okay. Most importantly, with repeated practice and commitment, things improve.

This fantastic blueprint has helped our daughter to accept failure, value practice and understand why commitment is required. This translates into an acceptance that she can contribute to class discussions and put up her hand to answer questions and that it is okay for others to disagree with her or for her to get an answer wrong. She has even been able to accept that sometimes she will do less well than expected in an exam or test but that this too is okay – because with more work and practice, she will improve.

Not only this, but her confidence and level of articulation mean she is able to comfortably read out loud, in class and in front of an audience at school, deliver presentations and even speeches.

All this as a result of nurturing her initial interest in stories and ways of storytelling during her pre-school years!

It just shows where encouraging and developing a child’s interest in stories, books and self-expression can lead.