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Looking Back at 2022

December 19, 2022
Looking Back at 2022
It’s almost time for a verse of Auld Lang Syne but before we wave goodbye to 2022, we want to take a look back at all our favourite moments from the last 12 months. 
 
We were so excited to see our students take to stages across the world once more, especially those that hadn’t been able to perform for some time due to the pandemic. Our events team started off the year in Edinburgh bringing our Scottish students to the stage for the first time since 2020! This kicked off a series of showcases across the UK, Germany and Canada, including six performances at London’s Shaftesbury Theatre. Our schools came from far and wide to give their students these performing opportunities with our Maltese schools travelling over a thousand miles to see their students perform in the West End. It wasn’t just theatres our students brought their performance skills to though as we also took a group to the Saracens Rugby Stadium to perform for the thousands of sports fans gathered there. 
 
In summertime, we took a huge cohort of students to Disneyland Paris for another edition of our Disney Dance the Dream experience. Our students had the opportunity to perform on stage, dance in the pre-parade and sing outside Cinderella’s iconic castle as well as have fun at the park with their families and friends. 
 
Back in the UK, we can’t mention summer without talking about this year’s Summer Showcase. Our ’22 cast put their kookiest acting to the test as they took on The Addams Family musical. After two weeks of rehearsal, the cast did four performances of the full show at the Beck Theatre in Hayes and they brought the roof down! 

 
We also launched a brand new campaign called A Place To… to celebrate all the parts of Stagecoach our students enjoy the most. From being a place to sing, dance and act to a place to express yourself and make new friends, we loved learning what our students wanted to see represented in our campaign and to officially launch it this year. A core part of this new campaign was our brand film, Stagecoach Presents..., this one-take film shows our real students and real teachers performing in a real Stagecoach school. The shoot was lots of fun and we're so proud of the end result.



Another new launch for this year was our teaching assistant course for students aged 16 and up. This new course allows our older students to gain an extra qualification during their Stagecoach hours which gains them UCAS points and valuable experience in teaching the performing arts. We see many former students return to us as teachers so we’re proud to be able to support our students in their mainstream education and careers even more with this new course.
 
Into autumn, we saw the opening of a new Stagecoach school in a new country for us. Welcome to the group, Stagecoach Lithuania! This new launch takes our total number of countries to eight and we’re thrilled that the team in Vilnius are bringing the joy of Stagecoach to the children and young people there. We also opened plenty of new schools in the UK and Germany and are always welcoming brand new Principals, teachers and students into the world of Stagecoach. 
 
October saw two every exciting ventures for us. We took part in the West End’s first ever fan convention, Musical Con, as a sponsor. Our students performed on the main stage and we met lots of lovely musical fans across the weekend. We also ran our UK-wide writing competition to send one winner and their family to New York in partnership with Sony Pictures for their new movie Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. We loved all the entries we received and we want to wish another congratulations to the winner, nine-year-old Evelyn, you can read her winning story here. We also brought Lyle along to one of our Shaftesbury Theatre events to meet our students!
 
We rounded off this fun-filled year with a festive celebration at the Birmingham Town Hall with our students performing wintery classics.
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As always, our biggest and proudest achievement of this year has been seeing our students across the world develop their confidence and find their passion through the performing arts. Thank you to everyone who joined us on the Stagecoach journey this year and we can’t wait to see what 2023 has to offer. Happy New Year!