Work with us: Workshop Leaders
Workshop Leaders
Primary dance or drama workshop leaders, and secondary school Shakespeare workshop leaders
Every child’s imagination should be inspired by the arts. West End in Schools' mission is to use the skills of the professional theatre to provide highly creative cultural experiences for children which they will remember forever.
Each year we deliver dance, drama and Shakespeare workshops and perform musicals and pantomimes in well over 1,000 primary schools all over England, Wales and Scotland.
We value creativity, efficiency, fairness and ongoing relationships between our performers, the company and our customers.
Work you can believe in
Inspire the next generation of humans and theatregoers.
Deliver work to a huge, diverse audience, cutting across barriers of access and wealth.
Create high quality work grounded in our experience as an Olivier Award winning production company.
Bring your best skills and do your best work.
Make friends, and make a difference.
Who we're looking for
An infectious passion and enthusiasm for the arts, and for storytelling.
Teaching experience, ideally of school aged children. We will consider great candidates with little teaching experience - particularly as dance workshop leaders, in which case additional training will be provided.
Strong communicators who get on well with people.
The ability to work quickly with groups of children (typically up to 30).
Time keeping, planning and organisation skills.
You must either have a recent enhanced DBS check or be happy for us to submit you for one.
Ideally you will be able to drive and have a clean driving licence - but this is not essential.
You will deliver the workshops on your own so need to be a confident and engaging representative of the company to the Head Teacher and other school staff.
Your role
On a typical day you will:
Travel to a school which could be some distance from home - perhaps staying nearby the night before.
Arrive at a school at 8.30am, start teaching at 9am and finish at 3.15pm. There is usually at least an hour break for lunch.
Lead workshops for class groups of approximately 30 children, throughout the day.
For primary school workshops you will be working with children from 4 to 11 years (Reception to Year 6 in England) and for secondary school Shakespeare you will be working with students aged 11 to 14 years (Year 7 to 9).
Option 1 - Primary School Dance Workshops
Our dance workshops, devised by Emma Cannon and Mairi Cowieson, explore the links between dance and storytelling.
In each session you will be leading various games and teaching the children existing choreography to which they can have some input depending on age/ability.
Depending on Covid restrictions there may also be an assembly to start the day, demonstrating different dance styles and introducing the workshops, or a sharing session at the end of the day, where the children perform what they’ve learnt to their peers.
We welcome applications from trained, experienced dancers or choreographers (typically from a musical theatre background, though we welcome contemporary and other professional dancers).
You must have professional credits to be considered.
You can read about the content of the workshops and how we describe them to schools on the dance pages of our website.
Option 2 - Primary School Drama Workshops
Our primary drama workshops, devised by Abigail Rosser, allow children to explore their chosen topic from a new perspective, using drama games and theatre techniques to take a walk in someone else’s shoes.
For all of our ‘Explorer’ style workshops, you will work class-by-class delivering a range of games and theatre exercises. All of the activities are provided for you in a plan and training is provided.
Depending on Covid, we offer some workshops which build to a performance involving every class at the end of the day (Shakespeare Today, Our World, Our Future and Poetry and Poppies).
You can read about the content of the workshops and how we describe them to schools on the drama pages of our website.
Option 3 - Secondary School Shakespeare Workshops
Our secondary school drama workshops, devised by Joshua Miles, bring to life some of Shakespeare’s most studied plays. We currently offer A Midsummer Nights Dream for Year 7, 8 and 9 and will be adding more play titles throughout the coming year.
You can read more about the the content of the workshops and how we describe them to schools on our Shakespeare in Action webpage.
Contract: Part time, freelance
Rate of Pay: All travel and accommodation expenses are covered and pay is on a good day or half day rate. We were the first organisation in the theatre sector to sign up to the London Living Wage. Workshop leaders are paid on a weekly basis using a self billing invoice system - ie we write your invoice for you and send you the payment, reimbursement of expenses and a PDF of the self billing invoice every Tuesday.
Location: We deliver work in schools across the UK and are looking for facilitators in all regions and hope everyone will be willing to travel. Some training days in London may be required.
Auditions: Some of our workshop leaders are full time facilitators, but the majority are performers in between acting jobs who need to be able to audition. We offer complete flexibility for auditions, and ask that in return you do your best to accept work from us at short notice if we ask you to when someone has withdrawn due to an audition.
We welcome applications on an on-going basis, but we will particularly be looking for new workshop leaders at the start of the school year in September and again in January.