Free For All in Wales

On Friday 11^th May the Free For All team met up in St Mary’s church in Swansea. Daniel Pollendine, Willan Shombe and myself (David Pollendine) worked with a highly motivated and talented school, Craig y Nos, to put on a performance to classmates, public and parents who came along. In the warm up Willan challenged the children to fill the stage so that they didn’t leave any empty space. This is an important exercise as in scenes like the Middle passage, Lord’s and Ladies and the finale the children have to be able to do this without our help or cues. As we discovered, their discipline in rehearsal paid off in the performance. We also challenged them to focus and give 100 percent to everything they did. I think this comes across well in the photos, which show the children reaching to symbolise hope. It was also a day of mutual learning about the role of Wales in the Slave Trade. As a key player in the industrial revolution with commodities such as iron and copper being produced, both were important to slave ships as copper was used as restraining bracelets on the slaves and Iron bars were often traded in Africa for slaves.

All in all we had a great day and we would like to thank Reverend Andrew Vessey for hosting the event at St Mary’s Church. We would also like to thank the school we worked with and were touched that after the performance they got together a collection for the Free For All network. We were a little disappointed that schools interest in Wales had been thin on the ground, but all is not lost as we now have a number of schools interested in booking Free For All in September. We hope that this will encourage a relationship with Welsh schools and CMS into the future.