FOM WYTHENSHAWE TO BOLOGNA
In the first of two extracts from his new book “Through a Different Lens, the inimitable Ger Graus looks back at life in Wythenshawe and a life-changing trip to Bologna.
Introducing Ger
Not everyone has an autobiographical work about education reviewed by the likes of Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education and Skills and Education at the OECD, James Neill, International Director at GL Education or Carla Rinaldi, President, Fondazione Reggio Children, Reggio Emilia, Italy.
But not everyone is Ger Graus, the extraordinary teacher from the Netherlands who came to the UK in 1983 as a young man and ended up staying, rising through the ranks en route to an international career as a writer, commentator, board member, academic and thinker. Those people who have heard him speak tend not to forget what he has to say, which is invariably connected to a vivid personal experience as a teacher and backed by convincing evidence. His words always reflect his profound belief in the infinite potential of all children, when and if they are made aware of the possibilities that lie before them.
In the first of two extracts of his new book Through a Different Lens Ger looks back at an early initiative which others frankly regarded as bonkers, but which met with huge success for all the right reasons. Ger picks up the story:
Driving home one day
We all have certain memories that are as clear as a bell and seem as if they happened only yesterday. I vividly recall in November 2002 my journey on the way back from meeting Adriano Monti, the then Italian consul to Manchester, to Tatton Park in Knutsford when I got stuck in traffic at the lights at Bucklow Hill. As I sat there, pondering my meeting with the consul about language learning and role-play, a question came into my mind: How many of Shakespeare’s plays are set in Italy? In my eagerness to find an answer, I phoned my friend Julian Chenery, the founder of Shakespeare 4 Kidz.
Shakespeare’s Italian plays
He informed me that there are 14 such plays but cautioned that two of them were too macabre for the primary-age range, so we should focus on the other 12 if I had anything in mind for kids. This led to my next question: Could we condense each play into a ten-minute performance à la Reduced Shakespeare Company? Julian’s response was an affirmative “yes.” And then I posed another question: Can we then divide the plays into five minutes of Italian and five minutes of English? Once again, the answer was an enthusiastic “yes.”
Kids behaving bardly
With this idea in mind, I collaborated with my colleagues at the Education Action Zones set up by the Blair government and our friends at Manchester Airport, and together we presented the concept to various potential funding partners. Shakespeare per I Ragazzi was born. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a truly remarkable project materialised.
We invited all children aged 7–14 from the socially deprived area of Wythenshawe, home to Manchester Airport, who were learning Italian and were interested in the project to come and audition one weekend in early 2003, and from there, we narrowed down the selection to 40 talented budding actors. To add a touch of celebrity to the project, we had the privilege of the company of the actor Neil Morrissey (one half of the Men Behaving Badly TV show) as the chair of the judging panel, deciding who would progress and who wouldn’t. Neil, with his own personal background as a foster child, clearly understood and signed up to the project’s essence, its principles, and its values.
With his involvement, the project gained even greater momentum. “Kids behaving Bardly for Neil” was the headline in the Manchester Evening News. Over the next 12 months, these chosen Wythenshawe thespians would dedicate their Saturday mornings to rehearsals and Italian lessons. Commitment was crucial, and attendance was key. It was a joint responsibility between the children, their parents and carers, the schools, and the Education Action Zones to ensure their active participation.
Wythenshawe in Bologna
And then, 12 months later, the moment arrived. We boarded a plane at Manchester Airport courtesy of British Airways, accompanying 40 talented Wythenshawe children, and embarked on a journey to Italy, to showcase their skills and talents in the city of Bologna, home of Europe’s oldest university. On 26 May 2004, 40 children from Wythenshawe primary, secondary, and special schools performed 12 Shakespeare plays set in Italy, part in Italian and part in English. Each play lasted no more than ten minutes. The two-hour evening performance, with a matinee rehearsal thrown in for good measure, was performed in the Piazza Santa Stefano and shown on Italian television.
In the 700-plus-strong audience were the United Kingdom ambassador to Italy, Sir Ivor Roberts, and his wife, Lady Sarah; British Council and Bolognese dignitaries; teachers and headteachers, including those from Wythenshawe; and most importantly, parents, grandparents, uncles and aunties, brothers, sisters, and friends of the families who had made the journey from Wythenshawe of their own accord, by train, plane, and automobile. You could taste the pride in the air.
That the project won the Association of Language Learning Award in that year came as no surprise to anyone.
The film of the play
Years later, I managed to convince a Wythenshawe film producer to transform the footage we had captured in Bologna into a film. Four years after the actual event, we proudly premiered the film in the Wythenshawe Forum, complete with an Allied Carpets red carpet. The parents and their actor-children were there, of course. As part of the film, we conducted interviews with the young people, now four years older, and the overwhelming sense of pride was still palpable; it was still all there. As primary pupil Samantha Fisher, aka Juliet Capulet, commented in that documentary some four years after the Wythenshawe and Bologna ‘Shakespeare per i Ragazzi’ project,
“Our lives will never be the same”.
The beautiful thing here was and is, that Samantha never quite knew that these were the very words Juliet lives throughout the entire play. Out of all, this is my favourite moment. “There are no words for this.”
A personal turning point
The sentiment echoed a profound truth and reminded me of anther story where my favourite tagline “Children can only aspire to what they know exists” originated. This was the moment where children candidly told me they couldn’t become a pilot because people from Wythenshawe don’t fly planes. Unearthing this new truth, this purpose, was the very essence of our undertaking. And the spark that set it all off was that meeting with the then consul Adriano Monti and some of my Wythenshawe headteacher friends in November 2002. When discussing possible big-scale projects between Bolognese and Wythenshawe schools, someone sitting in a corner said,
“You can’t do this with these kids.”
I would love to see those remarkable 40 individuals again, now some 20 years later.
Professor Dr Ger Graus OBE is a renowned figure in the field of education. He was the first Global Director of Education at KidZania, and, prior to that, the founding CEO of the Children’s University. In the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, Ger Graus was made an Honorary Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to children.
Ger Graus’s new book, Through a Different Lens was published in April 2025 and is now available for pre-order through Amazon, Waterstones and Routledge.
For Ger’s second extract from this book published in ITM, see
Feature Image: by Jessica Pamp on Unsplash
Support Images: Thank you to Shakespeare 4 Kidz – or S4K, 2003 view of Wythenshawe bus station by https://www.flickr.com/photos/philedmonds/ , Bologna by DEZALB from Pixabay and to Ger for the photograph from Romeo and Juliet
