Students use Shakespeare to inspire community Warm Hub sessions

The RSC and University of Birmingham students worked together with the local community in the theatre's Warm Hub using Shakespeare as inspiration.

The RSC’s Warm Hub is one of many in the county where people can come for warm refuge to reduce the cost of heating their homes and to find friendly company.

Open every Tuesday between 10.30am-12.30pm, the Warm Hub offers free hot drinks and snacks, alongside arts and craft workshops. Recently, sessions have been led by students from the University of Birmingham’s MA Shakespeare and Creativity programme, as part of a longstanding partnership between the RSC and the university.

Together with members of the Warm Hub Community, the students co-created activity sessions inspired by Shakespeare’s works, from creative writing to crafts, resulting in a 'Warm Hub Scrapbook' filled with art and craftwork including poetry, masks and handkerchiefs.

In the sessions run by the Shakespeare and Creativity MA students, attendees wrote poetry, created handkerchiefs and designed masks that explored themes found in Shakespeare’s works.
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FINDING COMMON GROUND

MA Shakespeare and Creativity student Liberty O’Dell was one of the co-creators of the project, and was inspired to see how the activities they devised from the community's interests allowed attendees to find common ground and connect with one another.

Liberty O’Dell said:
“Our hope was that the scrapbook would connect new attendees with the established Warm Hub community. Using the scrapbook as its framework, they created activities inspired by community discussions to produce the scrapbook materials."

He went on to say that the Shakespeare and Creativity Masters offers many opportunities exactly like this, where, instead of purely studying history and historical figures, the students are challenged to learn and interact with the people around them, and use their insight into Shakespeare's works to help their communities.

University of Birmingham student Liberty O'Dell said Shakespeare's works helped the students to create activities that engaged the local community.

"This project showed me how Shakespeare continues to be a vehicle for connection and changed my understanding of Stratford-Upon-Avon from merely being a place, to being a community.”

Read Liberty's full blog

Antonia Parker Smith, RSC Learning Partnerships Manager said:
“We were blown away by the work students did. They rose to the challenge of our brief and delivered a truly professional and thoroughly well researched proposal. It has had a real impact and will continue to guide the work we do in the future with the Warm Hub.

Following the collaboration, members of the Warm Hub have already volunteered to lead future sessions using the activity catalogue provided by the students as a springboard.

The Warm Hub at the RSC is open Tuesdays between 10.30am-12.30pm at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, and alongside the activities and refreshments it offers free WiFi.

The RSC and the University of Birmingham partnership began in 2016 and uses theatre as an engine room for creative thinking and research, a place to exchange artistic and academic knowledge and practice, and a shared commitment to enriching student experience and contemporary Shakespeare studies.

Find out more about the partnership

Students use Shakespeare to inspire community Warm Hub sessions

FINDING COMMON GROUND

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