PROJECT
Speech Bubbles, Trinity Theatre
PURPOSE
Using drama to develop confidence and communication
FUNDING
The programme costs £3,000 per school to deliver and is funded by Kent County Council, The Arts Society and The Brook Trust
BACKGROUND
Increasing numbers of children are starting school life with communication difficulties. In 2009, London Bubble Theatre Company developed Speech Bubbles, a weekly drama programme designed to give young children an opportunity to have fun telling stories and acting them out. In September 2021, Speech Bubbles became an independent charity.
Trinity Theatre in Tunbridge Wells, an arts hub focused on engaging the wider community in shared artistic experiences, has been delivering Speech Bubbles for five years, covering west Kent. Other organisations are delivering the programme in London and Manchester, including North West Drama and east London’s Half Moon Theatre.
ACTION
Aimed at children in Year 1 and 2 with speech, language and communication needs, Speech Bubbles supports children to gain confidence and develop their physical and verbal communication skills, using their own stories as a focus. The 40-minute sessions are run by a trained Speech Bubbles facilitator and a teaching assistant from the school. Schools identify two groups of 10 children who take part in the programme for 24 weeks.
There are three referral categories: children who lack confidence in communication, including children who are selectively mute and those with English as an additional language; children who have difficulty organising their thoughts and then communicating them; and children who have poor attention or poor listening skills.
The structure of sessions can vary depending on the practitioner and the needs of the group. Trinity currently has 12 practitioners working in 23 schools, seeing 420 children each week. Kent County Council, The Arts Society and The Brook Trust funds the programme in 22 of the 23 schools, and the other offers Trinity Theatre its hall as a rehearsal space in exchange for delivery of the programme. In other parts of the country sessions are funded differently. As Covid affected the number of schools Trinity was able to visit, funding rolled over to enable the organisation to work with a larger number of schools in the year 2021/22.
A typical session starts with the Speech Bubbles chant, which aims to re-enforce expectations such as taking turns in a fun way. The children then create and describe an imaginary “magical bucket” to encourage the use of adjectives and then “put their names” in the bucket by speaking them aloud. As the sessions progress, children might be asked to act out a particular emotion, such as anger, or suggest their own spin on the activity, such as doing it in the style of an animal.
“That is giving them a safe, confined way to be able to explore their physicality, their vocal expression, their facial expression,” explains Jason Lower, youth and learning manager at Trinity Theatre and a Speech Bubbles trustee. On other occasions children might put their favourite food “in the bucket” or what they did at the weekend. “You have to be aware that children will have different home lives – you don’t want to be in a position where you’re comparing Christmas presents for example,” says Lower. The name game is followed by an activity such as mirroring a partner, or disguising voices, encouraging children to express themselves.
The heart of the programme revolves around children’s own stories. Each week a child will stay behind and tell a story, which will be written down verbatim and read back to them. “We had a lot of Spider-Man at one point and Father Christmas stuck around until March,” says Lower. “Quite a lot of them are now going to the moon.” A set of cards can be used to help the child explain who is in the story, where they are, and what they are doing. After they have been given the chance to make changes, the story is transcribed into a book.
The next week the children sit around the “story square” and listen to the story. Children take it in turns to act the story out. “It’s really important that everyone gets given a chance to take part even if they have previously refused that day or in a past session,” says Lower. “You never know when someone’s going to surprise you and this will be the time that they really come out of their shell.”
The story is then used as a jump-off point for further activities. “You could say ‘I wonder what would happen when mum gets back, I wonder what she would say?’ And then we’ll see it again from another perspective,” says Lower.
After the story square some practitioners have a “shower” activity, where children “wash off” what has come before. The session ends with an action song and the children are asked what they enjoyed with the help of a mascot – Lower’s is a lion called Badger.
At the end of each session the teaching assistant and practitioner informally assess the children’s focus, receptiveness and expressiveness. Formal assessments take place at the beginning and the end of the academic year. “It is not just about improving within the session, it is about taking it out of the session into the classroom and the home,” says Lower.
Occasionally a child’s story may lead to safeguarding concerns. “We would still ask them to tell us the story, so we’ve got a record of it, because there might be only one opportunity to get that,” says Lower. Referrals can then be made to the school’s designated safeguarding lead if appropriate. “We’d ask the child to either tone it down a bit or if we could have another story because it might upset some of the others,” says Lower. Often in cases where a child’s story has concerning content, it turns out they have been playing inappropriate video games, he says.
Staff availability and working with school timetables are the main challenges. “The teaching assistant and the space need to remain the same for the whole 24 weeks,” says Lower. “Sometimes the practitioner may find that the space they have been given is not suitable – too small, too big, too many distractions – so communication with the school is key.”
This year, practitioners have noticed a rise in more challenging behaviour from the children. “We communicate with the Speech Bubbles team about any recurring issues and they have sent us a document with helpful tips to forward on to practitioners,” says Lower.
OUTCOME
Trinity Theatre worked with 13 schools in 2020/21, with a shortened version of the programme due to lockdowns. Teacher assessments for 229 children showed 69 per cent improved their learning, speaking and listening skills and 76 per cent improved their emotional behaviour and conduct. Teachers also said they had noticed improvements in the classroom in three quarters of children. “Had this been a longer run of the programme, with fewer gaps due to Covid outbreaks and requirements to work in bubbles, we expect these numbers to have been even higher,” says Lower.
Parents have also provided positive feedback. One six-year-old girl was having accidents as she found it hard to ask for permission to go to the toilet. Her parents told the school that since taking part in the Speech Bubbles sessions they had seen “remarkable improvement” in her speech and confidence. She is now asking to go to the toilet when she needs to.
Some children go on to join Trinity’s youth theatre. “One of my former Speech Bubbles kids was on the stage performing just before Easter,” says Lower. “If you’d have told me two years ago she was going to be confident enough to one day do something in a small group in the library, let alone perform on stage to friends and family, I wouldn’t have believed it,” says Lower.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Trinity plans to keep expanding its reach and is looking for further funding. “It’s a model that really works and the only reason it has not gone further is because we are limited to how far we can stretch ourselves,” says Lower.
Nationwide the Speech Bubbles charity is bringing in more theatre companies to deliver the programme, with Colchester’s Mercury Theatre set to join the network in the 2022/23 school year.
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