IRON ROAD EDUCATION PROGRAM
Honouring the Past ...Imagining the Future

Tapestry has a long history of creating and touring original shows for young people. In Chan Ka Nin and Mark Brownell's historically and culturally rich story, Tapestry found a vehicle that would not only bring Ontario students to see the work but bring them into the development process itself. The excitement of sharing Iron Road with young people - of inviting them to experience this rarest of events - the creation of a new Canadian opera - was matched only by our belief in its value as a learning tool. Two local schools in particular, Winona Drive Senior Public School and Northview Heights Secondary School, became part of the Opera-in-the-Schools component, where students were guided in the creation of parallel music theatre pieces.

Tapestry is fortunate to have had Andrew (Andy) Morris, a percussionist with extensive experience in school-based art projects, as a resource for the Iron Road Education Program. Andy conceived the schema of the Opera-in-the-Schools segment: to present the photographs that initially inspired Chan Ka Nin, and guide the students in discovering the history and poignant stories at the heart of these artifacts. Over a period of four months - from October 2000 to January 2001 - Andy and the students immersed themselves in two stage works complete with dialogue, music with orchestrations, libretti, sets, lights, sound, special effects and documentation. It is no exaggeration to say that the students were wild about their experience, and we at Tapestry were delighted to see and hear so much young talent at the final presentations!

Tapestry staff Susan Worthington and David Gram initiated the second component of the Education Program. Live & Learn integrates The Ontario Curriculum into a learning package for fifty schools, presenting grades seven to twelve students with a meaningful, timely and portable way to address the opera and the issues it addresses. The package encompasses Canadian history, world history, social studies, geography, geology, music history, stagecraft and even chemistry. A fifty-minute documentary video, Canadian Steel Chinese Grit, and a comprehensive study guide, researched and written by librettist Mark Brownell, compliment the program and prepare up to 3000 young people to view Iron Road. The Iron Road web site at www.ironroadopera.ca, with relevant links to archives, cultural and historical institutions across Canada, educational sites and Opera-in-the-Schools documentation, ties the Education Program together while extending it to schools across the country. It has been a great experience to work with our partners in the education community and to extend the values and learning inherent in Iron Road beyond the footlights. Moreover, the template for the Opera-in-the-Schools program and the materials in the Live and Learn package can be tailored for each community that Iron Road will perform in.

We thank the Millennium Partnership Program and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of this important arts education project. Tapestry also thanks and is especially proud of the teachers, students and colleagues who have participated in this extraordinary learning adventure. We hope that it will help to motivate and inspire those who believe, as we do, in the importance of the arts in education, as in life.

- Anna Camara, Communication and Education Coordinator