Fun and joy are integral to movang the learners, especially those with no or lile previous experience of formal educaon, but also to why the volunteers want to do it. While some of our volunteers have used their involvement in Creave English to facilitate them in progressing into work or professional teacher training, many also parcipate for purely altruisc moves and the enjoyment of it keeps them coming back week aer week. A volunteer explained: ‘We have been laughing so much this morning, it’s a complete tonic to come here. You could never regard it as work’ (Creave English Alliance, 2015a). Coventry University (2015, p.19) highlighted how the ‘underlying desire to help the programme parcipants […] was reflected in the efforts the teachers made to make learners feel welcome, and to encourage their parcipaon in communicave tasks and acvies’.


Props and costumes help to generate the spirit of play in the sessions. The session plans are supplied in a resource case which includes these items and visual aid cards for ease of preparaon. Our most iconic prop is a pink wig. At least one of our centres claims to work it into almost every session.


Flexibility is a core value of the programme. Working in partnership with learners in the research generated a flexible structure where learners could start or leave the programme at any point and stay as long as they wanted. The programme itself contains 38 different sessions on the core themes of shopping, health, housing, educaon, work and community. The self-­‐contained lessons gain their sense of connuity from the familiar characters in the plot. This supported the errac aendance typical of the most vulnerable learners. Flexibility is also important to the volunteers. Different Creave English centres deliver the programme in different ways, which are appropriate to their local context. While most organisaons deliver weekly sessions throughout the year, others find Term 1 as a 10 week course beer suits their requirements or select sessions to intensively address a specific concern in their community. Flexibility gives volunteers a sense of ownership over the programme. Volunteers and learners oen also share the need to fit around childcare requirements, which is addressed in the ming of sessions, peer support in looking aer children in the same room and even by involving the children in the sessions.


Delivery through the trusted faith and community sector enables learners who had never accessed English language teaching, even when funding made free ESOL classes available, to engage with the programme. The mulple learning styles encompassed by a drama-­‐based approach suits learners who struggle with wrien text and shy away from formal educaon. A grandmother, for example, who had been in the UK for 35 years without learning English, found she was confident enough to go shopping alone for the first me.


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