How Visual Art Can Enhance Our Understanding of Shakespeare

AccessArt is pleased to have collaborated with four schools from around the UK to deliver a series of visual art activities that aim to explore two of Shakespeare’s plays: Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The project asks the following questions:

Can experimental and observational drawing activities help children gain an understanding of Shakespeare’s plays, improve their knowledge of drawing techniques and their sense of creative confidence?

Can the complexities of Shakespeare’s text, characters and themes be made more accessible to children’s early or introductory explorations of Shakespeare, particularly for children who find written communication a challenge?

Can using visual arts activities enhance and complement existing methods of teaching Shakespeare in Primary and Secondary schools? ie through Drama and English Literature?

Some practical considerations:

Each session comprises of a warm up, followed by a starter discussion/context that then leads into the main activity. The warm up itself is standalone and is aimed at ‘sowing seeds’ that the class can then feed into how they approach the main activity. The main activity has more of an emphasis on objective but should remain as exploratory as possible.

The timings recommended for the sessions are approximate only. Depending on the structure of your timetable, you may wish to make some of the sessions longer or spread them over two sessions. These sessions focus on a selection of plot points of the play, but not all of them. The banquet scene with the ghost is not included for example.

AccessArt wishes to extend our thanks to the schools participating in this project! Thank you to the teachers and children at Ridgefield Primary School Cambridge, St Matthew’s Primary School Cambridge, Tweeddale Primary School Surrey and Cherry Grove Primary School, Cheshire.