We are delighted to announce the successful completion of Moving Stories: Embedding Dance and Drama in SEND Teacher Practice, a two-year teacher-development initiative led by Trinity Laban, Lewisham Education Arts Network (LEAN), and Peoplescape Theatre, in partnership with six specialist and resource-base schools in Lewisham.
Over the two years of Moving Stories, 12 teachers across six school settings partnered with dance and drama practitioners to explore how movement and dramatic form can enrich communication, engagement and pedagogy in specialist contexts.
Year 1 focused on practitioner-led sessions and co-delivery with teachers across the six schools, as well as training days. Year 2 emphasised sustainability: supporting teachers to embed these artist-led practices in their own sustained pedagogy, and engaging teaching assistants and the wider school team.
Key findings
- Teachers reported increased confidence in using dance and drama techniques in their SEND provision – moving from apprehension to integrating inventive movement or role-play into lessons.
- The flexible structure of the approach (either integrated dance + drama or using them distinctly) enabled personalised learning pathways for diverse learners – from sensory groups to formal pathways.
- Engagement, participation and communication improved: teachers observed stronger pupil participation, movement-based responses and expressive capacity.
- Team-working improved: teaching assistants became more actively involved in creative learning, and teacher-artist relationships matured, promoting shared leadership of creative pedagogy.
- Sustainability was embedded: teachers are now equipped to lead creative learning independently, with reflection time built in as a core part of practice.
- The project demonstrated strong potential for whole-school impact: participating schools signalled an appetite to extend the approach beyond the immediate cohorts.
Through Moving Stories, we have seen how the disciplines of dance and drama generate new routes into communication, embodiment, interaction and learning for children and young people with additional needs. Crucially, the research underlines that embedding artist-teacher partnerships – sustained over time, with built-in reflection (such as post-lesson debriefs) – is central to success.
Looking forward, the findings advocate for:
- Continued professional development for SEND teachers in embodied, creative arts-in-education methods.
- Institutional commitment (in schools, trusts and local authorities) to allocate time for teacher-artist collaboration and structured reflection.
- Strategic planning for scalability: embedding the approaches into CPD, referral pathways and whole-school culture.
- Monitoring and evaluation of outcomes for pupils over time – especially in communication, engagement and social-emotional development.
Symposium: Sharing the legacy
To mark the conclusion of Moving Stories, a Symposium was held on Monday 20 October 2025 at Trinity Laban. This gathering brought together participating teachers, artists, school leaders and wider sector stakeholders to reflect on the work, share case-studies and plan next-steps. Attendees from UCL Institute of Education, Ican Dance, Trestle Theatre Company, Northern Ballet, Primary Shakespeare Company, Dublin City Council’s Culture team, and other organisations heard about how the project has shifted classroom practice and discussed its replicability and strategic embedding in SEND settings.
We extend our thanks to all the schools, artists and team members who joined us on this journey, and to our funder, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Moving Stories has demonstrated that creative arts-led pedagogies can be meaningfully and sustainably embedded in SEND teaching practice – not as add-ons, but as integral to how young people learn, communicate and belong.
At Trinity Laban we are committed to continuing this agenda, sharing the learning from this project and supporting schools to realise its benefits. We look forward to working with new partners to carry this spirit into future collaborations.
For more information, please read the Moving Stories Executive Summary Report and visit the Moving Stories page on our website to keep up to date with further project developments.