Globe Education & S-E-T
A Very, Very Happy Partnership
This year we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the partnership between Shakespeare’s Globe and S-E-T Studienreisen. It began when Globe Education worked out of an old Museum around the corner from where the Globe now stands. I met Heinz Abeling, the founder of S-E-T, who was looking for ways to enrich students’ visits to London with educational activities. He saw our work, liked our work and began commissioning us to provide Shakespeare workshops, lectures and courses for German students and teachers.
20 years on and over 18,000 German students and teachers come to the Globe every year thanks to S-E-T.
We mark our 20 year partnership with a season at the Globe called Shakespeare is German. It celebrates Germany’s very special affinity with Shakespeare. And S-E-T and Globe Education have produced a new book, Goethe Uber Shakespeare, which brings Goethe’s two lectures on Shakespeare together in one volume for the first time. Two new translations will sit opposite the German originals as parallel texts.
The season may explain why Germans refer to Unser Shakespeare. This is the name we have given to our interactive lecture created for Oberstufe students. Schlegel said that Shakespeare was “ganz unser”! Well, we have so many Mittelstufe students participating in our Unser Globe workshop every year that maybe he is…or soon will be.
We are very keen to share our practical approaches to teaching Shakespeare in the German classroom so are very pleased that S-E-T will be running several teacher weekends at the Globe in the summer of 2011.
I am so grateful to S-E-T for being Globe Education’s longest serving supporter. I am also happy to report that that the old Museum where Heinz Abeling and I met 20 years ago has now been refurbished and will re-open this autumn as a new building for Globe Education called The Sackler Studios.
I hope you will come and visit and meet Shakespeare playfully at the Globe.
Patrick Spottiswoode
Director, Globe Education
Shakespeare’s Globe
