Watch Emmerdale star Joe-Warren Plant help primary school children in Liverpool create their own opera

Children at a primary school in Fazakerley have been busy creating their own opera.

The Liverpool-based European Opera Centre devised the project with Barlows Primary School where children are shown the animated opera film, The Cunning Little Vixen, a story about a clever fox who is captured and taken home as a pet.

The children then created their own version, devising everything from the scripts, music, props, and costumes.

Joe-Warren Plant, who has played Jacob Gallagher in the hit soap Emmerdale for over 10 years, is one of the project’s drama teachers.

Joe grew up working on the fairground. With support from The Arts Council, the production is working alongside The Showmen’s Mental Health Awareness Charity - an organisation founded and run by people from the fairground community.

Joe said: “We’ve been working with The European Opera Centre and The Showmen’s Mental Health Awareness Charity with the kids at Barlows Primary School to perform the story of The Cunning Little Vixen.

“We’ve got art production, music and drama. It’s very much a student-led project. We’re just here to help coordinate the kids and help drive them in the right direction.”

Year 5 students perform the opera initially for the rest of the school, then for their families.

Barlows Primary School Year 5 teacher, Sophie Collins, said, "Every single one of them loves it. I was talking to the parents last night and they were saying the kids are coming home saying how excited they are for the show."

Kenneth Baird, European Opera Centre Director, said: "This, I hope, opens up the world of opera. The children are too young at the minute minute to go to an opera but perhaps later in life; they can think, yeah, I'll try the opera - we created one when I was nine or ten."

The project is now moving on to a primary school in Bootle before they go up to the North East where it will be rolled out to the fairground community.