If you can't manage a visit to HMS Victory but would still like your class to be able to learn about the ship and what life was like for her crew then you could try booking one of these freelance learning providers who will come to your school and work with your students.

 

TRADAMIS means TRAditional Dance And Music In Schools. Its aim is to fulfill the growing need for teaching and resources in schools and the wider community. We provide specific teaching modules or customised packages with relevant back up resources. In many cases teaching is accompanied by a multi media presentation, putting the dance and music into social and historical context and introducing cross-curricular links.

 

 

In addition we are building up databases of information on traditional events, customs and activities which they hope, by linking with other archives, will become a major online resource for traditional material.

Set up at the beginning of 2003, they were involved in two major projects for Slough Creative Partnership plus a number of smaller events. Projects covered Social Dance over 750 years, Cotswold and Border Morris, Clog and Percussive Dance, Maypole Dancing and Traditional Music and Song. Smaller projects took us into Hampshire, Sussex, London, Kent while we provided advice and resources to schools in Liverpool, Macclesfield and Cardiff.

Recognizing that dancing and music touches everyone and is often a vital part of their lives., the teaching will always try to place the material in its historical context and to relate it to the world around us. A key component of this will be background information on sources with links to related topics in music, art, fashion, history, culture, geography etc. We will enable students to find out more and to be a creative part of the living tradition.

Mike Ruff is a professional musician, dance teacher and accredited animateur of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Over the last few years his work in schools has been increasing rapidly, particularly with Maypole Dancing and Tudor music and dance, although he has been known to cover almost the whole Key Stage 2 history curriculum through dance in a day!

 

Penny Brookman is currently teaching dance and drama at a college in Newbury and intends to return to freelance status. In addition to her professional dance training has worked extensively with TAPS and dances with Kintbury May Maids and ISIS.

Penny Pinder. Penny has been performing English folk dance, including Morris dance, since her own schooldays. She has many years' experience of teaching Cotswold Morris, to both experienced and novice adults and to children of all ages, as a former Foreman of Hurst Morris and now Foreman of Windsor Morris. With these groups Penny has choreographed, stage-managed and performed shows of Cotswold Morris for national and international festivals, a wide range of bespoke bookings and even the occasional TV show!

Penny has also performed English social dance (as a former member of London Folk) and has been involved for many years in teaching folk dance to schoolchildren, Brownies, Cubs, and even adults! She has a keen interest in British history and likes to use dance as a way of getting people to engage with events and lifestyles of past times.

 

Andrew Godfrey completes the team. His interest in folk music, seasonal festivals and calendar customs led him some years ago into an active participation in folk dancing. Now he intends to formally gather together his own research into the origins and development of folk dance and expand on it producing the multi media resource and database, which will be part of the Tradamis scheme.