‘In Another Dimension’ Buckland Newton takes to the stage

Some stories stay on the page, others were never meant to.

At Buckland Newton School, the story did not stop at words. It moved, expanded, and gathered momentum until it became something much larger than its beginnings.

Working with the whole school, we set out to build a script for the Buckland Newton Literary Festival. The starting point was simple enough: find some characters in need of a story. Working with the Year 1s and 2s we created not one, but around 25 brand new characters, complete with backstories, hopes, fear, friends, family etc.

The next day it was the turn of the Year 3s and 4s to take those characters and find their stories. And they did - they found loads of interlocking and standalone tales, all of which gave these characters life and agency.. It was brilliant.

At the Youth Club that evening, we took those characters and gave them a voice - writing impassioned speeches to persuade us as to why they were important enough to be included in the final script.

Finally it was the turn of the Year 5s and 6s to bring all of these stories and characters together, amalgamating, combining, changing and mixing the tales until the final, epic storyline was decided upon. This was the story they wrote up into the script. This was ‘In Another Dimension’. A play that took shape through collaboration—ideas layered on top of one another, scenes forming, characters stepping forward. This was a story that could not have been invented by one person, alone. This was a story that it took a whole school to tell.

Once the script was in place, it passed into new hands. Alice Loader translated words into visual worlds, crafting backdrops that gave each scene a place to exist. From there, the story found its sound, with Emma House and Harry Malabar building a musical landscape and adding sound effects and even a samba band to carry it further.

Finally, everything converged under the expert direction of Jo Simons—who took the many moving parts and, with considerable skill, shaped them into a single joyous piece of theatre.

What emerged was not just a performance, but a shared creation. A story that had travelled through many imaginations, each one leaving its mark.

The final production was, simply, a delight. Energetic, inventive, and full of the kind of moments that cannot be manufactured—only discovered through the process itself. A huge thanks from us to the staff and children of Buckland Newton Primary School, as well as to Kate Parish, organisational guru, who managed to make it all happen.

It is easy to think of storytelling as something contained. A beginning, a middle, an end.

But sometimes, when you share the process, what you create it something far greater than the sum of its parts.