Peter Brook Collection: Schools’ Outreach Project


Learning and Interpretation
June 25, 2015

In September 2014, the V&A acquired the Peter Brook Collection. Peter Brook is one of Britain’s greatest living directors and over the course of his career has produced ground-breaking plays, films and operas. Thanks to funding from the HLF and a private donor, the museum is rehousing and cataloguing the materials in the collection to make them available to researchers, practitioners and students.

The HLF are also funding what promises to be an extraordinary schools’ outreach project which will marry these important heritage materials with practical drama work.

Written by a cast member of Lord of the Flies
Written by a cast member of Lord of the Flies (1963) © Peter Brook/Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Six partnership hubs are being developed across London in Lewisham, Kingston, Redbridge, Ealing & Hounslow, Croydon & Bromley and Newham. Each partnership is made up of a school, a local museum or gallery and a theatre venue and will support a group of students to work together, inspired by one of Brook’s key productions, to produce an original one-act performance piece which will be brought to the V&A in April 2016.

The participating students will be able to use this opportunity to develop creativity and resilience through collaborative ensemble work, develop self-management skills when working in professional environments and engage with important heritage materials both at the V&A and within their communities.

The six productions chosen as the inspiration for the project are Brook’s King Lear, The Tempest, Marat/Sade, Lord of the Flies, The Mahabharata and Oedipus. Each of these productions engage with powerful themes of conflict, rebellion and invasion, all of which resonate strongly with young people and will inspire them to create new work which is pertinent to their lives and the issues they face today.

The teachers taking part in this project will also be able to use this opportunity to develop further expertise through team teaching with professional theatre practitioners, developing a deeper understanding of Brook’s work and his place within theatre history and engaging more closely with local theatre venues and museums with whom they can cultivate long lasting partnerships, enriching their practice for many years to come.

The cast of Peter Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in rehearsal
A Midsummer Night’s Dream rehearsal. Photo by Douglas H Jeffery © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

At a time when the position of the Humanities within the curriculum is under scrutiny and changes to funding mean teachers are less able to arrange trips and visits for their students, this project will offer an important free opportunity to the participating schools in outer London boroughs and support them in developing new relationships with cultural institutions.

Peter Brook believes theatre can be created in any space. This is an empowering statement for schools who are unable to fund long term Drama and English projects or build high-spec drama studios and auditoriums; performances can be created in classrooms with the tables pushed back, on playgrounds, in corridors and empty school halls.


We are grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund for their generous support of this project.

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