By Community Correspondant Lindsay Stewart

This week I took part in an acting course at Arts Educational School London. I signed up for the ‘Make a play in a week’ course, in the 13-16 year old group. When I arrived at the course I was welcomed by a group of 7-12 year olds, but no one over 13 years old. I groaned internally. The school dealt with it amazingly, offering many other options for me, but I decided to continue. I braced myself for four more days of high pitched screams, sugar fuelled excitement and a small girl who insisted she was part golden retriever.

Fortunately, my experience was much better than I expected. Spending a week with kids reminds you how simple life used to be. There’s no fashion competition, no need to show off and no insecurity. I watched as these children came up with crazy ideas that I would never have voiced and run across the stage illustrating their thoughts with unstoppable energy. In one day, we completed about nine short scenes which, when put together, made no sense, but on their own were an incredible achievement. I admired these kids, they were completely confident in what they did, never doubting the importance of what they were saying and within a day I found myself acting more like them.

This doesn’t mean that I was running around acting like a dog, but I found I had more confidence in what I did and what ideas I proposed to the group. If I was in a group of more mature, adult people, it would be a miracle to produce two or three full scenes in a week. On the contrary, we were rehearsing our full (half hour) play on Thursday and it wasn’t bad either! Although the outcome was a little depressing (our group created a play about a mother selling her daughter’s soul to the devil, who then overthrew God), the play was well rounded and actually very impressive.

So I think we should learn from these children, not to be so self conscious about ourselves, to trust our imagination and not to doubt our ideas. I thoroughly disagree with the phrase ‘Never work with animals or children’, I don’t know about animals, but I think we should find our inner child more often and be inspired by their positive approach and relaxed nature.