Bristol Old Vic tackles arts ‘emergency’ by bringing the theatre into classrooms — SkimNews
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- Bristol Old Vic's MIB260 company is touring two new plays into secondary schools across Bristol and surrounding areas at no cost to schools, expanding from an initial target of roughly 1,000 students to up to 4,000 at 19 schools after a social-media appeal drew a "huge response."
- "A Brit?ish Museum", written by Muneera Pilgrim, tackles British identity, the honours system, and colonial history; it was performed at City Academy, where 44.3% of the 970 pupils on roll in 2024/25 spoke English as an additional language versus a national average of 19.2%, and over half were eligible for free school meals.
- Lucy Hunt, Bristol Old Vic's engagement director, said the venue is "really aware that fewer kids are coming to see the theatre," with trips typically reaching drama students or middle-class pupils, making in-school work "the best way to get theatre to everybody."
- Drama teacher Beccy Pearce said tickets, travel costs, and "safeguarding red tape" turn school trips into an "administrative nightmare," adding that the play's themes of belonging, identity, and British values resonated with the academy's "boiling pot of lovely cultures and religions."
- Students including 12-year-old Elizabeth Yeboah and 13-year-old Bethany Davis-Croshaw praised the performance, with Yeboah saying it "brought up racism" and Davis-Croshaw calling live theatre "far better than traditional classroom delivery" for complex social themes.
- Bristol Old Vic is also targeting home-educated groups and pupils in hospital education beyond the 19 secondary schools already booked on the tour.
Why it matters: The schools least able to afford theatre trips are often the ones where live arts would land hardest. City Academy's demographics — 44.3% EAL, over half on free school meals — make it exactly the audience traditional outreach misses, and the expansion from 1,000 to 4,000 students shows demand for free in-school performance vastly outstrips supply. For Bristol Old Vic, the model also reframes the venue's role: not a destination but a delivery service for a generation that may never buy a ticket.
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