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All aboard the fun bus!


The long bus journey home used to be a time of boredom and misbehaviour for the children of Meadowgate Primary School. But an innovative programme has turned what was once ‘dead’ time into a celebration of music, art and creativity. Rebecca Kent hops on board.


A group of children are fixated on lanky cardboard puppets, engrossed in the gangly figures fashioned out of toilet rolls and packing tape. Another bunch are clapping to the tune and tempo of ditties strummed on an acoustic guitar by a jolly musician. A third gathering has tapped into their inner thespian, producing an amateurish play, ably assisted by a seasoned drama therapist.


You’d be forgiven for thinking this is some kind of youth jamboree or summer holiday camp. But fortunately for these children, this kind of carry-on is not limited to the off-season. It is a weekly fixture – and all on a bus.


The students of Meadowgate Primary School for special needs are lucky initiates in a groundbreaking scheme called Routes, where accomplished artists engage students in all manner of creative activities to take the boredom out of what can be a two-hour traffic-ploughing journey from school. That length of travel is a mighty ask of children at the best of times, but for those with autism it is particularly wearisome.


Routes, a programme unique to the Lewisham school, has been a runaway success. The innovation was dreamed up by head teacher Cassim Bakharia in response to concerns about the children’s behaviour on the bus.


A sizeable proportion of the school’s 73 students travel by bus. Most are autistic, but others have complex educational needs due to developmental delays.


“I lost count of the number of complaints I was getting. Fighting and distressing and dangerous behaviour – particularly affecting the driver – were common,” says Cassim. “Now, I rarely hear of a badly behaved child because the scheme has given the children from all years an opportunity to interact. On the whole, they are more supportive and tolerant of each other and that has even transferred to within school grounds.”


In the groundbreaking scheme, accomplished community artists take to one of five buses once a week to engage students in such activities as drama, music and dancing. The artists were delegated to the project by Jeremy James, the artistic director of the Greenwich and Lewisham Young People’s Theatre, which collaborates to deliver the scheme with Lewisham Extended Services and the Door 2 Door bus service.


The artists are only limited by their own imaginations – and the dimensions of the school bus, of course – in how they can interact with the kids. Jeremy’s selection criteria led him to plump for “versatile, multi-talented artists who could cater to the children’s individual needs and abilities”. Cue the creative powerhouse of Mark Stevenson, a theatre director, actor and musician, Ben O’Sullivan, a composer and musician, Eleanor Thompson, a dance artiste, Jo Paul, a dramatist, and Deborah Rothenberg, a drama therapist and puppeteer.


With the bus stopping frequently at children’s houses, anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours from the school, it was at first a tricky set-up for the artists to work with. But as the scheme has developed they now have it down to a fine art.


Isaac, ten, who is in Year 6, wholeheartedly endorses this after-school club on wheels. “I like the singing and acting,” he says. “Before Routes we used to just talk to each other and I used to play the Gameboy.”


Deborah, his mentor, is inspiring to watch at work. When school’s out, 11 boisterous children are loaded on to her bus each Wednesday and buckled in by assistant Pam Morgan from Door 2 Door.


Deborah is laden with a small arsenal of hand puppets, drawing books and pencils, a ‘moon’ crafted from a hula hoop and silver polyester, plus all kinds of curious and crafty paraphernalia. After enthusiastic greetings, the journey begins with a jingle and animated hand and arm movements before a sing-along to Moon River. They know the words, Deborah assures me, but today they are distracted by her home-made loo-roll puppets.


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Rebecca Kent is a journalist and copywriter, currently news editor and careers, entertainment and travel writer for TNT Magazine

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