Transcript: The Staffroom S05E03

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Elaine Long 

We are programme leaders on the UCL Early Career Teacher programme. Why are we in the Staffroom? We are here because this is where the best professional learning conversations always take place. This is where problems faced by teachers and leaders today can be explored critically, and where meaningful connections between research and practice can be made. 

Mark Quinn   

Over the course of this series, we will hear the voices of different colleagues as they come into The Staffroom – from ECTs to academics and executive leaders. We will talk about all things education – the challenges and the joys. So why don’t you enjoy a coffee with us, perhaps even grab a biscuit, and sit down for an hour of Staffroom chat.

Mark Quinn 
Welcome to the Staffroom. Phoebe Mills and Sarah Atherton, both from Freshwater Theatre, we’re really excited to have two creators in our staff room this afternoon. We're not so usually well represented by the creative arts, but here we are. You're in our Staffroom, which means we insist that you sit down, have a seat, put up your feet. My job at first is to bring you a drink and a biscuit. So, what can I serve you? Biscuit, drink, what would you like?

Phoebe Mills  
Oh well, I mean, it's sort of 3 o’clock now. So I think we're at the time of day for a cup of tea and a biscuit. So, I'll have a have a tea and a digestive. If you've got digestive. 

Mark Quinn   
Phoebe wants a digestive. That's the easiest ask we've had for a long time.
Sarah, what can I get you?

Sarah Atherton  
Yeah, I would like a coffee, actually. I feel the need to be caffeinated. I'm rather thirsty, so I'm aware that might dehydrate me, but I'm also rather tired because it's nearly the end of term, right? So, I could do with a coffee and yeah, maybe a chocolate digestive. I'd always drop my biscuits in my hot drinks though. So, I'll only managed to eat half of it. this office.

Phoebe Mills 

We are fans of dark chocolate digestive biscuits as well in the office.

Mark Quinn   1:25
Well, that's what I'll OK. I'll bring out a plate of chocolate digestive biscuits and a strong coffee for Sarah and a and a cup of builders for you, Phoebe.

Phoebe Mills 
Perfect.

Elaine Long 
OK, so now that you are well caffeinated and furnished with some dark chocolate digestive, admiring your exquisite taste there, I wonder if you could introduce yourself for our listeners. Tell us about your role and what gives you most joy. Phoebe, perhaps you could go first.

Phoebe Mills   1:58
Yes. So, my role is Creative Development Manager at Freshwater. So I oversee the creation and delivery of our workshops in schools. 

Elaine Long  
Thanks, Phoebe. Sarah.

Sarah Atherton   
So I'm the General Manager of freshwater and I've been in this role for nearly a year now. And what do I do? A bit of everything really. So I am responsible for the strategic direction of the company for sales, for HR learning and development.
All things office related and people related. So, it's my role to line manage all of the office team and support them and guide them in their endeavours and it's been a really interesting year for me because my background is very varied. I've done lots of different things, but I was a drama teacher for 13 years, psychology teacher also, so I know what it's like to be a teacher.

 

I work with children. I'm also a parent and have had lots of experience of managing different teams and I think for me the joy really is the joy I had as a teacher, in that I like developing people and bringing out the best in people.

Mark Quinn  
Brilliant. Thanks, Phoebe. Thanks, Sarah. I think, actually, what we should do is to tell our listeners a lot more, a little bit more about what Freshwater actually stands for and what you do. So, because I do my homework because obviously, once a teacher, always a teacher, a lot of homework and your own website, you talk about how all children deserve inspiring, memorable high quality learning experiences. You talk about that being above and beyond the classroom education and that you say creativity contributes to the well-being of young people and society as a whole. So those are quite lofty ambitions about what you stand for and what you hope to achieve. So, can you just tell us about how Freshwater Theatre does that? You know, how you enact that vision for, for young people?

Phoebe Mills   
Yeah, absolutely. So we used drama as a tool for learning, so we apply it to almost any sort of curriculum area we cover. In fact, the vast majority of primary school topics from Grade 5 over London to light and Shadows to French to rivers. And we use drama games and drama techniques to approach the topic in I guess a different way to the sort of standard classroom setup we use a lot of movement and a lot of play.

 

We know that a lot of children don't necessarily respond well to the sort of traditional learning classroom environments. So, in fact, a lot of our favourite feedback comes from teachers that you know, say, oh, I didn't know that that child could that or that child barely says anything in in class, but they were speaking really confidently in your workshop. Or, you know, I didn't realise that that child had retained as much as they had. And you know, they were speaking at the end and answering questions and recalling facts. So, I think through approaching the topic in a through a slightly different perspective, through using drama we can reach different children.

 

The facilitator who's leading the workshop is usually enrol as some sort of character, so perhaps a character from history or a time traveller, or an Earth explorer, and I think something that the children really value is having an adult inviting them into this sort of world of pretend and play.

 

I mean, I'm sure that a lot of teachers listening who have used teacher enrol technique will know that children find it really exciting when there's an adult playing with them. I think for younger children they're not necessarily aware of that dynamic for us, and sometimes they, you know, they will genuinely believe that it's Florence Nightingale sat in front of them.

Mark Quinn   
Is it younger children that you're often working with?

Phoebe Mills   
Yes, well primary school, the majority of our work with primary school. So, we cover from early years foundation stage up to key stage two and then we also have some, a small number of workshops for secondary school for Key Stage 3 pupils and we're looking to develop more secondary workshops.

Mark Quinn   
You were talking and you were talking there about teachers who are saying that, you know, you're reaching some pupils that they themselves find difficult to reach or you're getting learning or excitement out of pupils that sometimes that you know teachers surprised that that this is occurring during your workshops. 

Do you target children, you know, with special needs? Do you target, you know, schools which would serve less well served communities, or is that also part of your ethos?

Phoebe Mills  
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. We do work with specialist SEND schools. I mean I think more and more we're seeing the vast majority of sort of mainstream school classes have SEND pupils in them. And so our facilitators are often working out ways of adapting the content to make sure that they're able to include as many of the children as possible in the in the class.

 

I mean, I think it's definitely a type of learning that serves SEND pupils really well because it is active. I mean, we actually send out a document to schools beforehand that we call a social story, which is predominantly designed for neuro divergent children who might be put off by having an unfamiliar adult coming into their school and  leading a session and the routine, the normal school routine is shifted because you know, instead of doing English this morning, we're going into the hall and we're doing a workshop. 

So, we send out this document to explain to those children what the session is about and what they can expect, and they get a picture of their facilitator, which hopefully means that they just feel a bit more prepared and will feel comfortable joining in because actually if we can get them in the room and get them involved then they have a really brilliant, brilliant experience and really gain a lot from this type of learning.

Elaine Long   
I can see you're really passionate about what you do. I  was just pondering, as you were talking because we're thinking about well-being, which is hugely important in schools at the moment. And I was also thinking about learning and how that happens through drama and it's probably fair to say at the moment that there's a stronger emphasis on cognition and cognitive science and in the classroom. And I'm just wondering if you see any tension between that and learning through drama and what arguments you'd make for supporting learning through drama.

Sarah Atherton
Yeah, it's an interesting question really, because I've been a practitioner. I was a drama teacher for many years, which was amazing, and I had the opportunity, as Phoebe has described, to see children coming to life and being, you know, very different in my space or on the stage then they would have been in other subjects. 

I just believe that, you know, you do and you understand and that is the core of what drama teaching is all about. So, in terms of cognition, in terms of like really having an understanding, a strong understanding of your subject, then to do something actively you know is can only be helpful really to voice what you think and what you feel to be a character to play, to make believe, to work with a group. All of these things are memorable experiences, and they embed learning. I just don't think there's any other argument really. 

I think it's just, you know, you can't teach someone to ride a bike or swim without a bicycle or a swimming pool and it's so important to get up and do in order to really kind of understand and so I feel very strongly about this, move away from that kind of creativity and active learning. To rote learning and memorising lots of information, which shortly after the exam may, unless you use it again, just exit your head. You know where does it go? It's just it's, you know, it's just a memory test whereas if you're in the school play, or if you do something that you love and it could be maths or science that you love. But if you feel a real connection to something and you feel passionate about it, then it remains with you and so it is cognition, it is understanding, it’s true understanding as far as I'm aware. And so yeah, I think you know, any kind of practical learning is the best kind of learning, really and having an opportunity to do that, to apply what you learn and then to create your own.

 

And certainly that's what drama teaching is all about. It's about giving kids the skills to understand, evaluate, devise, create, perform and then off they go and they can make their own work as well. So yeah, it's the best way to learn really, as far as I'm concerned.

Elaine Long   
And in your experience at freshwater, Sarah and as a as a many years experiences as a drama teacher yourself, what do you see is the learning outcomes of that process? How do you see that manifest itself in students understanding and further learning?

Sarah Atherton
Before we have a really, you know, sort of good system of feedback where teachers provide quite detailed responses to what they feel the students have learnt with examples across a variety of categories, and frequently they'll give examples of then the students in terms of their writing or further discussion, or their play in the playground or how they take what they've learned from the sessions with our facilitators into the classroom and how that you know it's embedded so Freshwater has triggered something there. It's. It's enlivened the material. It's encouraged children to play a part of it and actually to feel ownership of what they're doing, rather than being told this is what you're learning, this is what you should be thinking about, this particular piece of material, this is how I want you to write it. You know my daughter left primary school. The things she was writing English were very impressive.

But it wasn't her voice. It was what she had learned. She was telling me., you know, you need to have six adjectives in the sentence. And I was like, wow. And that's not a proper paragraph, mummy. Well, this is a published author, Sarah. So you know Lara. So, you know, how is it not proper? And I think it's about ownership. You know, it's actually that child feels that experience and then they connect to the material. So,
we do that, we help that certainly teaches, of course do that too, but we help that process.

Mark Quinn   15.28
You know, obviously you get to travel to different parts of the country and your facilitators obviously get to different parts of the country. So, you probably have a good handle on what's going on in schools actually around England. And I'm thinking about those schools and often we hear a more, those more underserved parts of the country where they’re schools have made decisions about the school timetable, about the curriculum that the school will offer.

 

And you know the Packer extra maths and extra science and extra English, perhaps. And there's a it seems to be at least the way it's reported in the press that there is a kind of reduction and removal of the practical of the artistic, the performing arts subjects from those from those schools in those curricula, is that something that, you know, is it just a panic about this across the country or is this true? Is this what you find yourselves and is this something that you yourselves are also worried about?
Sarah.

Sarah Atherton   
Yes, for sure. I mean, you know, there's been a lot of conversation recently about a crisis in the creative industries that there aren't young people coming through the system with the actual technical or creative skills to then work in the industries which you know, in this country, we're very proud of our music and drama and art and theatre. And it kind of just shuts down opportunities for people from certain sections of society because we make these subjects like a treat, so it's an extracurricular activity, which if you can afford to go to, you know, drama club or do something after school, you can do. But otherwise, no. 

So, I really feel that these subjects have been so sort of undervalued. And colleagues have said to me, who still remain in performing arts teaching, you know, you wouldn't like it, Sarah, if you came back because it's very heavily weighted on written work. There's less practical and you know the numbers are just not there.

 

When I was a drama teacher, we had four of us in the department. We had at least four or five GCSE groups of 25 students each. You know, we're teaching over 100 students in year 10 and year 11 getting 80% A to C and the kids loved it and the school loved it and the head teachers supported it and it was fantastically popular and successful in so many ways, not just in giving students a qualification. and an experience to learn how to be creative. But in terms of well-being, social cohesion, a feeling of community in the school of being, part of that school community, of feeling valued, all of that sort of thing. 

So, you know, to not have access to the arts or for the arts to be undervalued, it's just a crying shame, really, that this has happened, particularly as when I was teaching, however, many years ago it was the opposite. The arts that were fated, they were encouraged, they were supported. Schools, educationalists could see so much value in them and you know, it's just tipped, you know, there isn't breadth. It's a narrow curriculum now, and we need to go back to thinking what it means to teach a practical subject and in a practical way and for students to feel proud to teach, to be taught those subjects, to learn those subjects, and, and to participate in those subjects as well. 

Mark Quinn  
We do not obviously, because our programme, the programme that Elaine and I work on, which is the early career teacher programme, obviously we've got lots of, we've got drama teachers and we've got technology teachers and we've got art teachers and we've got physical education teachers and I'm now I'm going to be told off for forgetting some subjects that we have teachers in, but we've got the full gamut of the subjects that teachers teaching and of course, all those primary school teachers who are teaching everything and I can't say we've asked them yet, Elaine, whether or not they feel that the subjects be or they, you know, they are particular area in the school is being reduced or whether they feel undervalued or not. But I think it's important to give a shout out to those people who might be in that music department, they haven't got three other colleagues, they might be the only music teacher in their school.

 

Do you have any advice to those teachers? If you're a teacher now starting out and you might be the only one, or maybe there's only a couple of drama teachers in the school, or only one, or maybe a couple of music teachers in the school. What would you say? What would your message for them be, Phoebe or Sarah?

Sarah Atherton 
Oh wow, just to sort of find others like you. I mean, I would often be like the only drama or in a small department put on a whole school production and get everybody involved.

Somebody will in textiles, will design a costumes, somebody in DT will build the set. Someone who does graphics will design the programme. Find likeminded people and fine networks. There are lots of sort of social media groups as well I see.
I'm still a member of a drama teacher, social media group. Phoebe went to a conference event recently for drama and music teachers, so find other likeminded professionals. Keep an eye on what comes out of the curriculum review because I'm hopeful that maybe in a couple of years not for my daughter, unfortunately, currently in year nine, but in a couple of years, GCSEs and post 16 qualifications may have changed.

 

There may be more emphasis on practical, impractical subjects, for example, so, you know, hang in there and, and I suppose, just to keep running the clubs, you know, year seven drama club, my year 10 students taught the year sevens and find opportunities for collaboration and ways of celebrating the work that you do with the kids. You know, school, concert, art exhibition, etcetera.

Mark Quinn  
I guess in that way the way you've just described there, Sarah, sounds like schools at any point, right? You know, I first started teaching in schools 30 years ago. But like yourself, I think and that's what you did, right?, I would have been that. I was a history teacher, so I would have been one of those muggings who was tapped on the shoulder and said, right, we need you to sell some programmes for us or whatever it might be. And you do that, you do that because you want to be part of that. And I think schools have always been a bit like that and hopefully schools are still like that, but maybe you know, even if the curriculum formally isn't valuing those subjects the way we all wish it did.

 

We should still hope that there's the energy within the staffroom for people to get involved where they can, but you mentioned the curriculum review and it's as if you knew the question would might come up about the curriculum review. We did have just so for anybody listening to the podcast out of sequence last it was last week, we had a kind of interim report from that. So, we got some signs of what might be coming out in the full review. This is the curriculum review chaired by Professor Becky Francis. And so the question to both of you, I don't know if Sarah, if you want to take it first Is if the committee came to you and asked you for your advice, what recommendations would you make to that committee?

Sarah Atherton

Well, I signed up for one of the focus groups, the one that was taking place in a sixth form centre, Kings Cross or Islington was full up, so I didn't get to go to that face to face, but I went on to one of these online focus groups and after Becky Francis and her colleagues have finished speaking, we were given an opportunity to ask questions in a sort of chat room. And there was a lot, there were a lot of comments about SEND of course. I mean, that was a really big issue and mental health and also provision for children in classroom and children just not being in school because there wasn't the provision. And then the second sort or most popular topic I could see was about practical subjects.

It was parents, teachers and other educationalists, people like myself, who work within schools saying why practical subjects not practical. You know, my son is doing GCSE P/E for example, it's 70% written or 80% written work and it's P/E and you know hasn't had the opportunity to do this. So, there were a lot of comments about making practical subjects more practical, weighting them differently, saying far too much written work, far too much emphasis on the academic or a certain kind of academia. And we need to, you know, address the balance. And we need to have breadth and not narrowing of the curriculum. So, I would really hope that those points were taken into consideration by the panel and by Professor Francis, and considered you know that there was a lot of strong feeling about that from all sort of members of the community that were being asked for their opinions.

Mark Quinn   
Phoebe, you got something to add there?

Phoebe Mills   
Yeah, I  would add two points. Firstly, quite a specific one. I think the introduction of the E-bac, the English Baccalaureate in 2016, we've seen a real sort of damaging impact on uptake of the arts because the E-bac basically schools promote students to take, obviously, English, maths and science and then also a humanities and an MFL or a language, doesn't have to be modern, it can be ancient.

 

Which means that schools aren't incentivized to promote art subjects. I think since 2010, when the E-back was introduced, there's been a 39% decrease in entries for drama GCSE, which I think is just a really shocking statistic, almost 40%. And we see this sort of knock on effect to the numbers of, you know, teachers specialising in drama and also the uptake at a level and the variety of university courses as well. In fact my course that I started at the University of Birmingham in 2016, which was a drama and theatre course. That is seeing its last intake of new students this academic year and then it will be closing and that was ranked one of the sort of best. courses in the country for drama when I started.

So drama has definitely being been neglected for many years as I think just on a specific point, adding in an arts as a compulsory element of the E-bac, I think would really help to make sure that there is that sort of breadth of choice for students.

 

And then I guess more sort of philosophically. I think this the question for me is what is the purpose of education? You know what are we trying to educate in this world where information is sort of at our fingertips? What do we want education to sort of promote? I mean, and I think teaching about self-expression and communication and creativity should be at the core of education, and drama provides the perfect opportunity to practise all of these sort of important skills for being a human.

 

And I think if you leave school and you sort of think, oh, phew, my goodness, that's over, then we've sort of failed. The education system has failed you and I think feeling a sense of joy at school sets learning up as something that you'd want to do going forward, and you'd want to do throughout your whole life.

 

I don't think that that's something that the school system is set up to sort of prioritise at the moment and using more playful, more joyful learning techniques, I think sets school up as a place that you want to be and sets learning up or something that you want to do going forward. So, I think for  Professor Francis, you know? Wouldn't it be wonderful if our school system sort of spewed out lifelong learners? And so I think drama is actually the key to bringing joy sort of back to learn. 

Sarah Atherton

That's our slogan. Bring joy back to the curriculum. Bring joy back to school. What's wrong with joy? Come on, let's have the joy.

Elaine Long   
Well speaking of joy, we also talk about joy in relation to early career teachers, because we believe retention requires joy. That's one of Mark's key sayings and I think one of the things that that will help children to feel joy is if they see their teachers feeling joy and genuinely enjoying what they're teaching, and I wonder if you see a positive impact on teacher well-being through your work. What have you experienced in terms of the impact on them as teachers?

Phoebe Mills   
Yeah, I mean, I've observed some really lovely moments in workshops that I've been sort of sitting in, in the corner of, and one that comes to mind as a history session led by the time traveller figure, and they were travelling back to the Stone Age and they did their sort of routine of turning around a little circle and saying a rhyme and then they sort of landed. The facilitator looked over at the teacher and sort of invited her over and sort of said, Miss, Miss, can you go outside and check that we've arrived And the teacher was sort of, slightly moment of confusion as to what she would be sort of being asked, and then it clicked that she was being sort of invited into this pretend world and this play.

And then she sort of really brought into the drama of the moment and crept over to the door and opened it and peered out, and then sort of look back at the children and, you know, proclaimed we've arrived. Then there was a big sort of cheers in the room and the children cheering and the teacher cheering. It was just a really lovely sort of simple moment of play together.
I mean, we also run CPD sessions for teachers and I think the hope from those sessions is to sort of show teachers that drama can help to achieve their learning objectives. Not, you know, I don't have time for that. I need to focus on delivering and teaching the curriculum. But actually, if you understand this way of working, it might actually help with what you're trying to achieve and it might actually improve outcomes.

As we've said a few times, you know we get brilliant feedback from teachers, but they talk about the sort of improved retention of topic content and increased engagement and you know, teach students finishing the workshop and saying they really want to go in the library and they want to carry on researching the wind rush because they just travel back and they just met some people that had experienced, you know, moving away from their homes and coming to Britain.

 

Also, an improved ability to sort of write about the topic as well, like coming out of the session, having met Florence Nightingale and going out and sort of writing a diary entry as if they are Florence Nightingale and that leading to much richer writing. So, I think definitely teachers see that when they observe workshops and then also when they are using these types of techniques in their own classrooms. 

I mean at the end of the CPD sessions, we ask for feedback and they always talk about being excited to use these techniques in their classroom and they're sort of looking forward to using these strategies, and in fact, one of the words that comes out most often in the feedback from teachers, is just the word fun. They had fun during the session and they're looking forward to the fun that they'll have in the classroom with the children. And I just think that word is so important and so, so special. Particularly, it's sort of primary school and secondary school.

 

I mean, I think one thing that teachers are really calling out for more and more is that is agency over what they teach and how they teach it, particularly in sort of adapting their curriculum to the needs of, you know, their individual pupils and their individual communities, and drama is such, when we say drama is the best multitool you'll find, it's really malleable and can be sort of used to approach all sorts of issues. So I think, yeah, it's definitely a tool that can bring people's and teachers joy alike.

Elaine Long  
I think it's really interesting what you say about drama being a vehicle to help teachers achieve that their learning objectives and a vehicle to deepen knowledge. In fact, like, for example their knowledge of Florence Nightingale and their knowledge of how to deepen their writing, because often there can be misjudged tendencies, to see drama as the sort of fluffy creative stuff that isn't linked to real learning. 

And I think you highlight something really important there that it's a great tool that teachers can use to in fact enhance knowledge, enhance learning and enhance skill in a variety of areas and it's really interesting that you provide those concrete examples of how it does that, because I think that really challenges that view. 

We're coming to the end, we're running out of our supply of chocolate digestive biscuits. Marks helps himself to rather too many, but we'd like to end our podcast by giving our guests a post-it note on which to write some advice. I'm going to pass you both one now and Sarah here is your post-it note. Phoebe here is your post-it note. 

You have a choice now, you can decide what you write on your post, it note and you can decide where you stick it, so, it could for example, be on a staffer in wall, it could be on a teacher's planner, or it could be, you know, on the curriculum review report as some side notes. 

So, Sarah, I'm going to ask you first, what are you going to write on your post-it note and where would you like to stick it?

Sarah Atherton
That's interesting. It's a great question. I mean, I just feel that having been that drama teacher and now thinking that actually a lot of teachers need to be more confident in themselves and actually learn to, you know, stand on their feet and not feel afraid to try out different things because everything is so prescribed and so standardised. I would write, you know you can do it, you know, or just try. You can do it. Go for it, that kind of thing. Believe in yourself, you know? Take a risk. I'm quite a risk taker. I think it's really important to just try something new. So yeah, I'm just right you can do it. And where would I stick it?
Well, we went to the pub, didn't we? And we played a sort of post-it note game where we stuck them on our foreheads. I don't know if I stick it on my forehead, maybe, yeah, stick it on the forehead. You look in the mirror in the morning and there it is. You can do it.

Elaine Long  
Sounds good. And Phoebe?

Phoebe Mills   
I would say I would write on my post-it note, get moving because I think there's real benefit to just sort of in even yourself, not even thinking about working with children, but getting up off your feet and giving yourself a shake. I mean, we're real advocates for going out at lunchtime and just going out and having a walk and coming back and you just have this, like, renewed sense of productivity.

 

And I think you know often for children, if they don't feel comfortable in a particular learning environment, there can be that heightening sense of anxiety that builds. I think we've all got examples of our own sort of childhood where we didn't feel comfortable in the setting and your brain just sort of stops working and you stop being able to absorb or, you know, retain information or even answer the question that the teachers asked you because you've got that sense of sort of anxiety.

 

So, trying to alleviate some of that and bringing in these sort of more playful movement based approaches will hopefully mean that they feel more relaxed and they feel that sense of joy that you know that word that we keep coming back to and they'll be able to retain information much better and answer questions much more sort of confidently and articulately. So, for us, you know, in our own sort of sense of mental health, getting up moving is really important and then also trying to incorporate little sort of movement breaks into your class classroom teaching as well is really helpful for the for the children.

Where am I going to stick it? Maybe on sort of the toilet door, because I think teachers are so busy, aren't they? That they're always moving around. They probably don't have much time to sort of actually sit and absorb things. So, actually when they're sat on the toilet, they can read it then.

Mark Quinn   
OK, so Phoebe, they're sitting on the toilet and there's a post-it note saying get up and move. 

Sarah Atherton
But not too quickly. 

Phoebe Mills

Do what you have to do and then move?

Mark Quinn  
Well, I can hear a bell ringing. It's a school bell rather than an interval bell, so I'm sorry we didn't provide a theatre bell for you this time, but I can hear it, which means that we have come to the end of our chocolate biscuits. I didn't eat them all. I did leave a couple for you. So please take a couple on your way out. Phoebe and Sarah, it's been a real privilege having you both in the Staffroom this afternoon. Sorry to take you away from more important work because it is very important work. 

Phoebe Mills  
Thank you for having us. 

Sarah Atherton 

Thank you so much for having us. It's been lovely.

Mark Quinn  
Yeah, and good luck with your work.

Quinn, Mark 
Our thanks go to our friends from Freshwater theatre. Phoebe Mills, who's the Creative Development Manager, and Sarah Atherton, who's the General Manager for sharing their chocolate biscuits and tea and coffee with us in the Staffroom this week. If you want to find out more about the work of freshwater theatre, you can go to our website, www.freshwatertheatre.co.uk.

Elaine Long
Please get in touch, if you would like to be part of the conversation, click the link at the bottom of the UCL Staffroom web page.

Mark Quinn  
If you've enjoyed this episode, there's more where that came from. You can search IOE podcast from wherever you get your podcasts to find episodes of the Staffroom, as well as more podcasts from the IOE.

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