With live shows banned and Covid beginning to tighten its grip on any activities, it was beginning to look not a lot like Christmas.
But the team at Inverness’s Eden Court theatre worked with Highland Council to give pupils in the north a treat.
The theatre’s engagement team took to the studio to create a brand new 45-minute show, for primary schools.
Festive Letter is performed live at Eden Court and then streamed into classrooms across Highland via Google Meet. It’s a fun, interactive show with lots of games for pupils to take part in. Thanks to the digital setup, the actors can see the children dancing along, waving and clapping throughout the performance.
Eden Court will put on 16 shows, reaching more than 500 classrooms and some 8,000 children.
The run has started – and Jude Saint, seven, from Crown Primary in Inverness was impressed.
He said: “It was really good – it was funny and I liked the music.”
Spreading Christmas cheer
This year’s interactive digital show follows on from the success of Eden Court’s Christmas Cracker in December 2020. It’s part of the team’s vision to ensure its work benefits communities across the Highlands.
“In the Highlands, the reality is that many of our schools can’t make the annual trip to Eden Court, so making a digital offer like Festive Letter is all the more accessible to our most remote and rural, and often smallest, schools,” explains Lucy McGlennon, Eden Court’s head of engagement.
“We absolutely believe that experiencing live performance in real life is best, but as that wasn’t possible for our schools this year, we hope Festive Letter has brought a little Christmas cheer to young people across the region.”
Festive Letter follows Noel, the sorting office manager at Eden Court, through the busy month of December.
Head Office has sent some Festive Temps, Holly and Ivy, to lend Noel a hand. But neither of them have worked in a sorting office before – and they’re far too excited to be much help!
Fun end to a challenging year
Highland Council’s education service funded the show to make it free to primary and special schools.
“I am delighted that we have funded and supported this fantastic opportunity to provide a very special festive treat to our children and young people in over 500 classrooms across Highland,” said education chairman John Finlayson.
“This has been a challenging year for our schools but this delightful performance will hopefully bring some safe, fun and festive cheer to around 8,000 children in Highland.
I would like to thank our partners at Eden Court for working with us to deliver this treat across our large school estate, including reaching out to our settings in rural locations.”
More from the Schools & Family team
The P&J investigates: Why are other countries’ education systems outperforming ours?
Inverness nursery raises inspectors’ concerns about medication
