LAMDA Announces New Storytelling Qualification

Our first brand-new LAMDA Exams qualification since 2017, Group Storytelling for Performance, will launch for examinations this year.

Group Storytelling for Performance empowers learners to embrace all styles of performance and create a narrative through their own combination of speech, reading, acting and movement.

Celebrating collaboration, communication and creativity, the syllabus helps learners develop transferable skills that can serve them across educational, professional and performance settings – including oracy, confidence and self-expression.

Built around LAMDA’s ethos of the ensemble, the qualification is designed to be flexible and inclusive – without the requirement for every member of the group to speak. Instead, Group Storytelling for Performance embraces different forms of storytelling, including mime, dance and narration. Through this, it nurtures confidence and encourages active participation – giving learners a space to share ideas and express themselves how they wish.

Its flexibility comes through the format of examination, using pre-recorded assessments submitted online to facilitate different approaches to exam scenarios. For example, a school can choose to submit a filmed assembly performance for assessment, allowing the syllabus to be seamlessly embedded into classroom teaching.

Linda Macrow, Chief Examiner at LAMDA Exams, said: "At its heart, Group Storytelling for Performance champions imagination and collaboration, bringing learners together in a group to create and tell a story, and encouraging them to express themselves in whatever form they wish. We hope this will inspire creativity, enrich classrooms, and support participation from even the shyest of learners.”

Increasingly, the skills developed through LAMDA Exams are being recognised as essential for a rapidly changing world of work. 

The UK government’s recent changes to the national curriculum recognises the value of arts subjects and underscores its vital role in young people’s personal development. The ability to collaborate, communicate effectively and adapt with confidence are all skills valued not only in education and the arts, but across every professional sector. 

Professor Mark O’Thomas, Principal and CEO of LAMDA, said: “We remain committed to providing LAMDA Exams learners with access to high quality, forward-thinking performance and communication qualifications that equip them with the skills they need to excel in life. Like all our qualifications, Group Storytelling for Performance nurtures oracy, imagination and self-expression, supporting learners to develop life skills and opening pathways to achievement, growth and opportunity.”

Group Storytelling for Performance is our first new qualification since the launch of the Shakespeare qualification in 2017. Developed with inclusivity and oracy at its heart, Group Storytelling for Performance demonstrates our commitment to creating qualifications that remain accessible, relevant and of the highest quality, whilst supporting learners to develop the skills and confidence for their future.