Creativity in Sport is run by Lizzie Webb

Lizzie trained in the teaching of Dance, Drama and English at the New College of Speech and Drama in London. After graduating in 1969 she accepted a full time teaching post at Henry Thornton Comprehensive School, a boys school renowned with its thirteen hundred pupils for being one of the toughest schools in London.

There were so many social and educational problems, she decided the best way to try and influence their lives was to form a Drama Club. The aim was to concentrate on an eclectic mix of pupils – some had severe emotional difficulties, others considered candidates for classroom exclusion or expulsion.

The club was run in the lunch hours and after school. Plays, revues, pantomimes and musicals were written and performed each year. Teaching “funky” dancing was, for many of the boys, the initial attraction for joining the club.

Lizzie left the school when in 1974 she was appointed tutor in charge of a unit for Disturbed Adolescents but she continued to run the Drama Club in the evenings at the boys’ school for a further two years. She was delighted when after coaching three of the boys they successfully applied to the National Youth Theatre – two of them from remedial classes.

Further successes were gained when five of the boys auditioned for a new television dance group to replace “Pans People” on BBC1. Two of them joined the group which became “Ruby Flipper” and two of the boys went on to become members of the “Second Generation” dance group. Patrick Lewis became the first black ballet dancer to join the English National Ballet Company and is currently teaching at the Royal Opera House on the “Chance to Dance” scheme; Floyd the first black dancer in “Hot Gossip” is now a choreographer. Garry Noakes is currently Theatre Director in the West End for the hit musicals “Fame” and “Saturday Night Fever”. Jeff Thacker for five years was Executive Producer and Head of Music at Granada/ LWT and is currently producing a new TV format “So you Think You Can Dance” with Simon Cowell’s team in Los Angeles.

Whilst Lizzie was very involved in their training and successes she was also visiting other pupils in remand homes and prison. For one of them she was called as a character witness to the Old Bailey after he was charged with attacking a Police Cadet – he is now a 7 th Day Adventist Priest.

A years lecturing post at New College enabled Lizzie to supervise the teacher training of final year students in a variety of primary and secondary schools.

Dougie Squires, the choreographer and founder of the “Second Generation” recommended that Lizzie teach at the Italia Conti Stage School which led on to teaching posts at the Sylvia Young Stage School, London Studio Centre, Guildford School of Acting and several other exercise venues, including the Dance Centre and Pineapple Dance Centre in Covent Garden. Lizzie also had the opportunity to run her own dance group and choreograph several TV commercials.

In 1983 Greg Dyke’s P.A. was regularly attending one of her weekend classes in London when, at her suggestion, Lizzie was invited by him to join TVam to devise and present 2 exercise slots each morning. This she did for nearly 10 years, which allowed her to not only produce fitness and health campaigns but to originate other shows including “Kids Work-Out” for Thames TV and the hugely successful video featuring Joggy Bear. The video reached No.2 in the Children’s video chart and continues to sell today.

Lizzie has written four books, numerous articles for national newspapers and devised and presented 8 award winning exercise videos and a ninth on dance.

Since 1987, Lizzie has been a Patron of the National Osteoporosis Society attending several medical conferences and fronting campaigns. For the last five years she has raised much needed funds by running in the Flora Light Challenge and in the London Marathon in 2004.

In the autumn of 2001, she completed a Return to Teaching Course at Reading University to take up the challenge of school teaching again. She went on to enjoy teaching the Performing Arts Course at the Cressex Secondary Modern School in High Wycombe and took exercise and drama classes, concentrating on pupils excluded from the classroom.

For the last 8 years, Lizzie has been developing her own interest in teaching skills and the importance of strength and conditioning training in all sports. She has the RSA teaching exercise to music qualification and has been changing and developing traditionally held concepts in the fitness world. Her particular interest is the trunk area and she has formulated a series of programmes, which she has isokentically tested and researched with Dr.McGregor, a senior lecturer in Biodynamics and Muscoloskeletal surgery at Imperial College London. Lizzie taught these programmes for two years to the Great Britain Women’s Rowing Squad as part of their preparation for the Olympics in Athens.

Lizzie has created a new initiative titled “Creativity In Sport”. She would like to offer a wider range of dance activities in both primary and secondary schools, including musical numbers as a team sport, choreography as a cross curricular activity and hi energy synergy. This project was successfully piloted last year in the Royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and the borough of Buckinghamshire.

In 2006, Creativity in Sport collaborated with Park House School and Sports College Newbury in running the “Creative Champions” Competition for 6 local Primary Schools. This was based on the initial competition “Go! London 2012”, which was devised to encourage all school children to creatively participate in the Olympic Bid.

www.golondon2012.co.uk