Over the past two years Shakespeare’s Globe has worked intensively with teachers in Zhengzhou to explore how creative approaches to teaching Shakespeare can enhance their own practice and the intellectual skills and emotional development of their students. During the project, the Globe also invited researchers to document and assess the project. The findings were disseminated in two conferences held in this July in Zhengzhou and Beijing, together with workshops led by practitioners from Shakespeare’s Globe and participating teachers.

The British Council China arts team met Georghia Ellinas from Shakespeare’s Globe when she was in Beijing for the conference. Georghia leads the project as Education associate and we talked about challenges of bringing Shakespeare to non-English speaking states schools in China and also learnt the Globe’s future plan to engage with Chinese creatives and educators.

States school students in China often need to cope with a quite packed academic curriculum, hence limited time and space for creative development at school. Shakespeare’s Globe working with Zhengzhou schools serves as a good example of nurturing students’ creativity and meeting curriculum goals at the same time. While there are more debates in China on balancing academic excellence and creative development, the project can be a good start to track progress of the development in the long run.

The following words are from one of the Chinese teachers in the project from Zhengzhou to share her practice and learning during the process.