August 22
So, ISTA and I share an anniversary of sorts. This is ISTA’s 40th year and it is my 40th year as a theatre teacher! Actually I should really only claim the last 25 years as a theatre teacher. The first 15 years I was mostly a theatre director...
August 19
I am sitting straining my powers of recall to focus on the early days of ISTA. It is not easy for as Claudia Hammond points out in her book Time Warped ‘… the flexibility of memory seems to be the key to imagining the future. Our millions of...
August 19
The founding principles of ISTA were developed to bring together international school teachers from different geographic locations who were working in isolation and to provide young people with a much needed antidote to competitive theatre festivals...
August 19
Looking back over the years that I have been leading IB workshops, it’s the people that make the experience worthwhile. Seeing the participants having lots of fun, engaging in detailed discussion about pedagogy, about ideas or that light bulb...
August 19
I don’t remember getting paid 50 quid a festival, as Ian Pike does… in fact I don’t remember money ever being a part of the conversation around being asked to be an ISTA artist. The word ‘artist’ stuck in my head first. I was a bit of a...
August 19
ISTA Connect festivals: Bangkok, Cambodia, India, America, Philippines – to name a few. I want to highlight two of them as standouts because they can act as blueprints for future ‘Connects’. First, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It did everything...
August 19
ISTA AiRs have become one of the highlights of my work in recent years, mainly due to the collaborations and developments which have occurred as a result of strengthening relationships between myself and the teachers and schools involved. The...
August 13
‘Teachers are the spark they need. But teachers need their own spark.’ Yvette Jackson, The Pedagogy of Confidence As teachers we spend a great deal of time letting our students know about opportunities to get involved in local workshops,...