On Wednesday 30 November, Year 10 and Year 12 Drama students attended a workshop by the theatre company Paper Birds. The workshop was focused on improving our devising skills for our upcoming projects as part of our courses. We spent the afternoon devising a piece around a speech by the activist Malala Yousafazi.

We studied how to incorporate both her message of hope and forgiveness and our technical drama skills into our devised piece to make it engaging and memorable. The person leading the workshop was really good at forcing us to not overthink things or focus on perfection – he told us to just focus on the drama and the message, and not on making it polished and perfect.

The afternoon was really engaging and helpful to all of the students. It was a fantastic opportunity, and I’m sure it will help us all in the months to come.

Barbara S, Year 10