“You are so disloyal,” one moans.

“What are you talking about?” responds the other. “No, I’m not.”

“Well, I thought we really understood each other. I mean, that stuff you told me on the school tripI ” We are at Bore Place, near Sevenoaks, a Jacobean manor house and organic farm set in 500 acres, a million miles from the clamour of the city. The “schoolkids” are actors, improvising a scene from a children’s TV script, watched by writers and producers. Yards away, in the former stable block, another group is discussing children’s animation; across the gravel drive, in Bore Place House, three people are mulling over the problems of turning a children’s novel into a feature film.

They are participants on a residential course for children’s writers organised by Performing Arts Labs (PAL), which has been running collaborative workshops for writers and artists since 1989, and will soon be doing the same for teachers. The free “Labs of Learning”, due to start in the next academic year (possibly not until 2003), will offer teachers a chance to unite personal and professional development by providing training in which the focus is not on the curriculum or the needs of the school, but on the teacher as a creative individual.

PAL founder and director Susan Benn says the PAL philosophy of giving creative people a pressure-free space to learn is as important for teachers as it is for artists. “What we’re doing is about learning to learn,” she explains. “And teachers have a unique role as creative leaders of learning.”

PAL organises around 10 Labs a year and has brought 1,700 creative professionals - writers, composers, dancers, directors, musicians and internet designers - to work with tutors and mentors from their fields in a relaxed but intensive atmosphere. “To take risks, writers need the opportunity to experiment, and to do so with other creative people,” says Ms Benn. “They need a safe space where real collaboration can happen, where people can stretch themselves beyond their limits and the limits of their form.”

“The outside world just falls away here,” says Jenny Thompson, director of the children’s writers’ Lab. “There’s an extraordinary atmosphere of generosity, and the level of sharing and learning is unique.”

In Labs of Learning, the “product” will not be a book, play or film, but re-inspired teachers who are creative in the classroom after working with arts professionals. The focus is on using the imagination, something Susan Benn is passionate about.

“If we’re going to prepare ourselves, and our next generations of children, for living in the modern world, we have to learn to share knowledge at many levels. All things can be achieved if teachers use their imaginations and pass it on. It is the most precious individual gift we have, but it needs to be nurtured.

“In an ideal world, Labs would be part of the teacher training curriculum. They would be used to make interventions at specific points in teachers’

careers. I would like to build the principles of Labs into the lives of schools, or clusters of schools, and into teacher training organisations.”

The Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Trust and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts are funding a three-year Labs of Learning programme with five strands: creative science teaching (the first Lab, to be held in the next academic year); clown training for teachers; school clusters; Labs for gap students; Labs teacher trainees. Details have still to be decided, but the Labs will be free. For more information call Vivien Harris, the newly appointed Labs of Learning director, on 020 7387 9966, or email vivien@pallabs.org after 29 April. For more PAL general information: www.pallabs.org