Arts & Culture

Pegasus has been running Tale Trail, a literacy programme with local schools since 2013. The project has been so successful it was recently nominated for a national Learning Award by Children and Young People Now magazine.

Tale Trail is a two year programme that supports young people’s literacy through the arts. Arts practitioners go into the schools for a term to work with pupils in creative ways by looking at storytelling through the prism of performance. Poets, playwrights, dancers and musicians encourage children to explore different ways to tell stories from around the world. The exploration fosters a keener interest in reading and writing as well as a new found confidence through performing their stories on stage at the theatre in front of their peers and family members.

In its first two year programme, Tale Trail worked with 150 pupils some of whom made 2 sub levels progress in reading, the equivalent of one year’s improvement in a term. Teachers also welcomed the opportunity to discover new ways to teach literacy and inspire their students with activities that involved creativity and imagination.

Teacher Emma Hunter Lacey says: “This project has been brilliant in terms of performance skills, confidence building and SEAL objectives.

“I have seen a real development across my whole class, but often it was the kids I didn‚Äôt expect, that the project had the biggest impact on.¬† I think in the way the lovely thing about a project like this is that it brings out the underdog.‚Äù

At the end of January it will be the finale to the first year of the next two year programme, the latest group of year 7 pupils will take to the stage with performances of their stories. They come from schools around Oxfordshire: Millbrook School in Grove, Rose Hill Primary in Oxford, St. Francis CE Primary in Oxford, East Oxford Primary, Drayton Community Primary and Great Milton CE Primary.

Tale Trail continues in partnership with the Oxfordshire Teaching Schools Alliance and is supported by Artswork.