Art as the Medium to Break Free from Screens
Super Connected: The show we'd been waiting for
Forward thinking schools want to go beyond the basics and the Tim Arnold Company provide a production that will engage, challenge and motivate parents (and staff and older students) towards a shift away from a smartphone based existence. It’s a feature film, a musical performance and piece of theatre, all wrapped into one. It addresses the concerns that parents and schools are increasingly raising, that of the capture of our lives, and our children’s lives, by smartphones and BigTech. But rather than approaching the challenge with a bullet point list, we instead receive a heart-wrenching story, based around a critically acclaimed album, that poses urgent questions and changes perspectives. I urge any fellow school leaders and/or parents to explore the Super Connected project and book a performance at your school.
Tim Arnold and Sarah Kershaw showcase a range of musical styles, from punk-twist-rock-pop to hold your breath ballads. The lyrics are evocative and telling, an example being the refrain “are you getting it now”, which changes from inquisitive question to aggressive command. The music and showmanship are set to a richly textured silent movie that captivates the audience, simultaneously telling a story of ordinary suburban family life and a jarringly familiar dystopia, taking on the theme of our time: the subjugation of our collective humanity to screens and smartphones and the betrayal of a generation of children.
We decided to give it a try at Harrodian School. And The Tim Arnold Company blew the doors off. People left the show exhilarated, exhausted, slightly discombobulated and still talking about it days later. One theme was common to the conversations - that things are not right, that change is needed and that we can be that change.
Responses to the challenges of the ‘smartphone based life’ are varied, from campaign groups to phone pouch companies to proposed legislation. Now, we have a rock n roll musical masterpiece! Representatives from NHS group Health Professionals for Safer Screens attended the show and BBC 5 Live are fans. The legend that is Stephen Fry lends his voice to the album and his support to the project. There is a lot here to get excited about.
Many schools are responding to the terrible impact of smartphones on children by banning them from the premises, which is most needed, but the step beyond is to promote a different way of being to our parents and children. Not easy but, in Super Connected, we have an artistic vehicle that promotes a very different destination to the current trajectory.
The Tim Arnold company is touring in 2025 and schools across the country should be clamouring to book a performance. This is pupil wellbeing pushed front and centre and shouted from the rooftops. It is an event that provides a collective experience, not least with the ‘screenless social’ that follows, which can inspire and connect school communities.
As famously said, art holds a mirror to humanity. We all looked, together. Thank you, Tim and the team, for performing at our school.
Guy Holder is Head of PSHE at Harrodian School and an ambassador for Delay Smartphones
Learn more about Super Connected
Incredibly important work (which should have been done long ago by educators and policymakers). Art is so important for effecting positive change and you deserve every success. For the other type of harm - serious biological effects of manmade microwave radiation from wireless devices - particularly to children, see compilations of studies on https://ehtrust.org and https://phiremedical.org which also explain the reasons why we are told the science is 'uncertain', despite a large body of authoritative peer reviewed research showing otherwise.
This sounds amazing. I see on the website that it is 15-rated so obviously not suitable for primary schools! How would I, as an interested parent with no kids yet at secondary school, find a way to see this?