Creative Dance Tales Digital Resource

CoisCéim BROADREACH and the Physical Education Unit School of Arts Education and Movement at DCU have launched the Creative Dance Tales Digital Resource, a dance resource for primary school teachers.  This resource is also a legacy element of the company’s three year Arts Council funded residency at the College.

Creative Dance Tales is storytelling through dance. It began as a pilot workshop series supported by The Ireland Funds in 2015, and ran in parallel with David Bolger’s production The Wolf and Peter by CoisCéim Dance Theatre. The workshops were delivered to over 300 children in 8 primary schools around Ireland, giving children an imaginative, kinaesthetic learning experience in dance. In part Creative Dance Tales emerged from requests made by teachers in primary schools. 

Creative Dance Tales Digital Resource is a tool box which can promote integrated learning. It was designed to promote creative dance as part of the physical education curriculum, to inform and encourage a cross curricular approach to learning, and contribute to developing varied pedagogical practices in dance. Content and ideas for four lessons plans drew from the musical score, and the choreographic and dramatic material from ‘The Wolf and Peter’. It evolved through working with children in different primary school settings nationwide, and through working with the Physical Education Unit and undergraduate student teachers from The Institute of Education.

The dance digital resource is available on The Arts in Education portal website http://artsineducation.ie/en/project/creative-dance-tales/

Pictured at the launch (L-R): Philippa Donnellan Director BROADREACH  COISCÉIM, Seóna Ní Bhriain Head of Young People, Children and Education, Arts Council , Dr. Regina Murphy Head of the School of Arts Education and Movement, Dr. Anne Looney Dean Institute of Education, Susan Marron and Dr. Maura Coulter lectures PE Unit, Pat Burke Stage Technician, Laura Warren and Catherine Byrne  Primary Teachers and former PE Major Specialism students, Sinead O’Loughlin Major Specialism in PE BEd 3 student and Dr. Frances Murphy, Lecturer PE Unit.