Between July 10 and 12 all partners from the CultureShake project gathered at the Shakespeare Centre to catch up on the different elements of this three-year transnational schools project. While representatives from Karlsruhe University of Education, Primorska University in Slovenia, the English School Gothenburg in Sweden, and Friedrich-Woehler-Gymnasium in Germany focused heavily on matters of project management and budgetary questions, as any international project consortium would, we also used the time to familiarise everybody with our teaching facilities and the fantastic opportunities for young people to engage with Shakespeare.
On the Monday afternoon, the project team was treated to a stacks tour to introduce the CultureShake partners to our Archive and Collections. Among all the treasures we look after, they were particularly impressed with our collection of translations. The 24 students from Germany and Sweden will use these translations for their own Shakespeare dictionaries they are creating in all the languages the participants speak (which include Hebrew, Amharic, Farsi and Macedonian, just to name a few).
We also paid a short visit to New Place and to the Birthplace on the Wednesday morning, when the gardens were at their best in the sunshine after a rainy Tuesday. As you can see from the pictures, all partners very much enjoyed trying out the dressing up activities at New Place. The school teachers especially took great care to ‘familiarise’ themselves with the properties in this way. After all, they will need to know what to expect when they will return in September with their students in tow.
It has been a great pleasure to host this meeting at the Trust and the Learning and Participation team are already very much looking forward to their Stratford visit later this year. As I am told, the students, parents and teachers involved in CultureShake alike consider this to be the highlight of the entire project, so no pressure there then!
