DIASPORA EDUCATION AND TRAINING 65
A CURRICULUM FIT FOR PURPOSE
WORKING TO MAKE OUR SCHOOLS’ DRAMA AND DANCE CURRICULA MORE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE COMMUNITIES THEY SERVE
BY mezze eade For information about the RinD project, including resources, please email : Representation.in.Drama@gmail.com For updates on One Dance UK’s work on decolonising the dance curriculum, please email : info@onedanceuk.org
"YOUNG PEOPLE REGULARLY ENGAGE ONLINE WITH THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY SO IT IS STRANGE THIS IS NOT REFLECTED IN OUR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES" mezze eade
Every child and young person should feel represented in the subject content they study at school. Every child and young person should be encouraged and inspired to learn about other ethnicities and cultures, and every child and young person should know that they have access to the broadest variety of knowledge in our schools and colleges. RinD (Representation in Drama), led by Romana Flello and mezze eade, addresses systemic imbalances in KS3, GCSE and A-level Drama by supporting intersectional anti-racism work happening in UK schools, theatres and theatre companies. The initial focus of the project has been to work with exam boards to review the representation of writers on their GCSE Drama specification Set Texts lists. In May 2020, between the four main exam boards there were 27 plays that could be studied by GCSE Drama students and 26 of these plays were written by a white playwright. The lack of representation of writers from the global majority* does not reflect the lives of young people and what is happening in the creative industries today. This lack of representation is found in Dance: five of the six set works created by white choreographers at A level and the careless omission of African American practitioners from jazz history at GCSE. If you only have one type of flower in your garden, you don’t have the best garden in the world. If you have every type of flower in your garden, then you have the best garden in the world.
