Education Associate Nina Swann talks about the schools work she’s setting up around The Lion’s Face
This month, we’re running a pilot educational programme with a group of 30 year 9 students from Graveney School in Tooting. The project aims to marry subjects from across the curriculum, demonstrating how science and the arts can interact and how music and drama can illuminate our understanding of “difficult” subjects.
The project runs from 30 June and includes a visit to the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London where the students can observe some of the scientific research going on into dementia, particularly Alzheimers Disease. They will also be asked to do some of their own research closer to home. With our aging population, it is reckoned that every family is affected in some way by the effects of dementia, including such common symptoms as memory loss. These experiences will be workshopped and result in a music-theatre presentation for fellow pupils at the school on 9 July.
The plan is that this project will be rolled out in some of the regions where the full opera will tour in 2010.
The project is led by The Opera Group’s Education Associate Nina Swann, animateur Mark Withers and Simon Lovestone, Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London.
