Royal Opera House ‘Flower Power’ Family Sunday in collaboration with The Black Curriculum
The Family Sunday Royal Opera House event sees the public come into the experience and engage with the ballet, opera and company members and diverse practitioners to learn and experience these unique artforms. For the ‘Flower Power’ Family Sunday, 12th June 2022, Christina Peake, Senior Educator at The Black Curriculum, worked with ROH to research and curate the content to reflect the diverse Black British, communal and plant-based histories in Covent Garden of the past 800 years in response to British Flowers Week.
This event saw characters come to life to reflect local key figures such as Ignatius Sancho (reportedly the first Black British person to vote in 1774) and Elizabeth Rosina Clements who was a maid to one of the most successful sculptors of C18th and consequently was deeply immersed within the London creative community. The event also saw an extraordinary ROH Youth Opera Group performance featuring an excerpt from Othello where the children presented Desdemona with Fair Trade Flowers and a zine created to reflect the breadth of the history and communities that have made a significant contribution to our national histories.
One of the critical outcomes of this partnership was to widen participation and engagement with ballet and opera as well as the other art forms that intersect the discipline such as costume design. Ballet and Opera traditionally may have a reputation as ‘high art’ forms with limited accessibility for young people from diverse audiences. The theme of British Flowers Week was also used to highlight how histories are diverse and interconnected by linking Black British histories to sustainability and climate awareness in addition to the role plants have played within society and their history of migration.
This event was an extraordinary experience and an opportunity to witness families and children engage and perform in a variety of creative disciplines and how the arts can bring past and present worlds to life.
