I first learnt to juggle in 1990 when I was studying in my final year of P.E. teacher training College. Within a few months I had taught 100′s of my friends to juggle and taught the entire school where I was completing my final teaching practice. It soon became apparent to me that as well as being great for those who already enjoyed sports, such as myself, it also had the capacity to involve those who usually didn’t or at best experienced little success in more traditional sports.

This led me to complete my dissertation on how maybe a way of getting more pupils to succeed in sports was by looking at different activities rather that just trying to rework how to teach football, rugby and cricket! This certainly wasn’t any sort of anti – competitive sport mission I hasten to add. Juggling certainly can be competitive but in a different way as you are always challenging yourself and looking to others for ideas. It also can act as a springboard for success. Once pupils improve their coordination and body control though learning to juggle it can help them succeed in a whole range of other sports.

What I found was that it did involve those pupils who didn’t usually succeed, it had no particular gender/ culture bias – boys and girls were just as likely to succeed and participate and very valuably it gave pupils a large degree of control over their learning. Once the pupils learnt the basic cascade they could take over the learning process – inventing tricks and teaching each other.

Since setting up Splats we must have taught over 2 million!!! pupils the juggling technique and we hope provided a fun and inspirational skill for them to share with others. Our philosophy is that anything is possible and juggling is a great model to help pupils understand that. What seems very difficult is in fact simple once broken down into steps and practiced. This learning skill can be transferred to all other areas of their school life.

I truly believe that the impact of our day in the school in terms of co-operation, confidence and learning will last for months, and for some pupils, years.

All the best

For the last fifteen years or so we have developed our create a show days. The idea of them is to work with a group of children for about an hour , teach them a scene and then in the afternoon put on an amazing show. In-between that, they make all the props, costume and set!

Theatre in education with an added splat.

Sounds a bit tricky I know and doesn’t sound long enough to get a quality performance, but do you know what – it works and I think it’s because it’s so spontaneous. I guess it’s our Covent Garden background but I absolutely love it and I think this technique has a lot going for it.

I think I shall call it The Splats Method, how about that darlings!

During a splats day there will be kids doing stuff that there was no way the teacher or the other kids expected.
I’ve had teacher’s warn me that such and such would be difficult as will hardly speak and by the afternoon they are cackling an evil laugh and playing the panto baddie with gusto or air guitaring at the front of the stage. (My computer wants to change that to air guttering which sounds like extreme roof maintenance. I was writing about Vikings that pillage the other day and it changed to it to Pilates but  I digress.

The joy of pirate life

Pupils will perform with a sense of freedom & self expression.

• the fear factor

When we have a big event such as an interview or even a performance we often have a mix of inspiration and fear. Sometimes time in rehearsal or the build up to an event can mean that fear can begin to override the inspiration that is naturally there.
What we aim to achieve in our create a show days is to condense this process so this fear doesn’t have time to kick in. This means that often pupils will find they have already performed the show before they have had the time to think, this isn’t what I would usually do! Or, what will people think of me?. By then they have already been there, done that and challenged their preconceptions and had a lot of fun along the way.

                                 Just do it – now there’s a good tag line!

Of course builds up to a show, anticipation, rehearsals are a wonderful part of theatre but by making it all in a very short space of time it can have the benefit of breaking through their perceptions before any barriers have time to be built.

                  no big deal, just enjoy, have some fun and don’t have any fear.

I think it works because the intuition of the child is that this is a safe learning environment and they can take part without fear. They see everyone else doing fun things then why shouldn’t they.

By trusting our instincts we often make some of the best decisions. How often do you think after much deliberation that your initial gut feeling was a good one?

Also what effect does this have on the pupils self perception and confidence.
I like to see it as a little flash or paint stroke in their memory -  a splat of colour and fun
which will affect what they think they are capable, which is of course ANYTHING.

Children often do perform and play with no fear but sometimes as they reach a certain age other thoughts begin to become more prominent. Returning to a child hood state at a childhood is probably a lot easier than waiting to you’re 42.

       have fun and don’t take yourselves too seriously – a good tip?

Just to add. I talk about it being very free and expressive and spontaneous but this does only come from a load of planing and preparation in the scripts, music, staging etc. It is of course great fun to do this but I am not just saying give a kid a funny wig and go, you do need to have worked it all out and that gives the space for their confidence to shine.

Luckily we have done all this work for you, with a little help from 1000s of children and teachers who have added new ideas every show

Anyway let me know what you think and if you want to learn the splats method – patent pending ;0)

Steve Richards