Globe Announces new Co-Directors of Education

Professor Farah Karim-Cooper and Lucy Cuthbertson Announced as New Co-Directors of Education @The_Globe

Shakespeare’s Globe is delighted to announce that Professor Farah Karim-Cooper and Lucy Cuthbertson have been confirmed as Co-Directors of Education, leading the largest education department in a theatre in the country. Lucy and Farah were joint interim leaders throughout the Globe’s year of closure, creating over 600 events and courses, and supporting the nation’s sudden critical need for quality home learning.

Farah and Lucy take on the position after Patrick Spotiswoode, who served as the Director and Founder of Globe Education for 37 years, confirmed his retirement last summer. Starting 14 years before the completion of the Globe, Patrick was one of a small team dedicated to keeping alive Sam Wanamaker’s dream of a reconstructed Globe theatre at the heart of an educational and artistic centre in Southwark.

Lucy and Farah have been at the forefront of keeping the nation engaged with Shakespeare in all ways online. Events over UK lockdown included: live and interactive storytelling sessions with families joining all around the world, study workshops launched online to help support teenagers missing school. As part of anti-racist approaches to Shakespeare, there was a digital festival of work and newly created workshops for children, students, teachers and staff looking at ways to decolonise Shakespeare.

The success of education from the Globe ensured that family work reached 31 different countries, and nearly over 3,000 families. Over 500 teachers took part in online Continuing Professional Development sessions. The YouTube release of ‘Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank’ production of Romeo and Juliet for students and teachers has been watched over 340,000 times. A live online storytelling of The Winter’s Tale simultaneously reached more than 1,500 students in over 10 schools, amounting to almost a full house in the Globe Theatre. The Globe’s Higher Education programme converted its provision of university and drama school courses to an online programme, working with students in the USA, Saudi Arabia and across the UK. Teaching for the popular Globe/King’s College London MA in Shakespeare Studies moved online into a virtual learning environment. Funding was secured for a co-supervised doctoral student working on race and Shakespeare. Finally, at the end of last year, the Early Modern Scholars of Colour Network launched to address the significant under-representation of faculty of colour employed in permanent positions in UK universities for Shakespeare and Early Modern Studies. 

Professor Farah Karim-Cooper, said:

“Having been part of this organisation and this department for the last 17 years, it’s an honour to be able to step up to co-direct Education. I know the important legacy of this department and its groundbreaking projects and programmes. I am committed to ensuring Education at Shakespeare’s Globe continues being a leader in generating lifelong learning through Shakespeare and his theatres and I look forward to co-steering it in new directions with community engagement, performance, scholarship, anti-racism and social justice as its guiding principles.”

Lucy Cuthbertson, said:

“Having joined the Globe only a few months before lockdown, this last year has been something of a rollercoaster adapting to an online world alongside brilliant colleagues and freelancers. Much of my career has been based on a passion for working with students & teachers through Shakespeare & Drama with a focus on integrating equality, diversity & inclusion principles into all we do. The Globe is the most exciting theatre I know so I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to continue developing & promoting these powerful ways of learning, in such a unique role as Co-Director of Education.”

Neil Constable, CEO of Shakespeare’s Globe, said:

“As we reopen the Globe Theatre after over a year of closure, it is fantastic to announce our new Co-Directors of Education, both of which have led the department through our hardest year increasing engagement in Shakespeare in so many new ways across the world. The Globe is so fortunate to have Lucy and Farah’s outstanding combined experience at the helm of our much admired and appreciated education department and supporting the Globe’s longer term creative and artistic planning.”

Professor Farah Karim-Cooper is Professor of Shakespeare Studies, King’s College London and previously Head of Higher Education & Research at Shakespeare’s Globe, where she has worked for the last 17 years. Farah is President of the Shakespeare Association of America, having served as Vice-President and a Trustee previously. Her newest book, an examination of race in Shakespearean literature ‘The Great White Bard: Shakespeare and Race, Then and Now’ will be published by Oneworld in Spring 2023.

She is on the Advisory Council for the Warburg Institute and is on the council for the Society of Renaissance Studies, and has held Visiting fellowships around the world. She leads the architectural enquiries into early modern theatres at Shakespeare’s Globe, overseeing the research into the design and construction of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the Globe’s indoor Jacobean theatre. She has published over 40 chapters in books, reviews and articles and is a General Editor for Arden’s Shakespeare in the Theatre series and their Critical Intersections Series. She has written two: Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama (Edinburgh University Press, 2006, revised ed. 2019) and The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage: Gesture, Touch and the Spectacle of Dismemberment (Arden 2016) books and edited five anthologies of essays, including with Christie Carson, Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment (2008) and with Andrew Gurr, Moving Shakespeare Indoors (2014).

In 2018 she curated the Globe’s inaugural Shakespeare and Race Festival. She is an executive board member for RaceB4Race, a consortium of Scholars and institutions that seek racial justice in the field of pre-modern literary studies.

Lucy Cuthbertson has been the Head of Learning at the Globe since 2019. Her work spans both professional theatre & school drama education with over 20 years’ experience in state schools as Head of Drama, a Lead Practitioner for Greenwich, school senior leader, teacher trainer & Director of Drama & Theatre for a large multi-academy trust (Griffin Schools) with 13 schools across the UK. She is an advocate for arts in education, drama on the curriculum and young people’s access to quality theatre & drama teaching in school. She was Artistic Director of Stantonbury Theatre for two years which transformed during her tenure into a vibrant venue prioritising work for and by young people. Originally trained at The Poor School and a founder member of the theatre company, Ridiculusmus, she has extensive experience as a director with professional, youth & student theatre. She founded Kidbrooke Theatre Company, known as the most successful school-based theatre company in the UK, touring regularly to professional venues and festivals, winning many awards including Fringe Report Best Play for the world premiere of Hotel World adapted from Ali Smith’s novel.

Lucy also has nearly 15 years of experience delivering LGBT inclusive education in schools for students and teachers, much of it in conjunction with Stonewall Champions. She is a Trustee of Greenwich Theatre and associate director for Splendid Productions with whom she has worked on over 15 productions that have toured to schools, colleges and venues UK & internationally.