Join celebrations at the Mayor's Thames Festival & Liberty Festival

6 September 2013

The Mayor's Thames Festival

A 10 day celebration of London’s iconic river through art, music, and educational events. The Festival starts today and will come to an end on Sunday 15 September. Read more

National Paralympic Day

Tomorrow we celebrate the first anniversary of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. To mark the occasion the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will present the very best of disability sports and arts including the Mayor of London's Liberty Festival. Read more

Spoke at Mayor of London’s Liberty Festival

Spoke will be at the Queen Elizabeth Park tomorrow for a feast of outdoor arts all day, with our six shortlists Young Poet Laureate‘sperforming commissioned Olympic poems at 4:30pm. Read more

Free Schools

93 new free schools will open for the new school year, more than doubling the previous number to make a total of 174. This includes a bilingual primary school backed by Judith Kerr, the children's author. Read more

It was announced this week that one third of all free schools opening this year are in London. Read more

Munira Mirza, deputy mayor for education, said this week that split shifts and three-day weeks were a “highly undesirable” way of running schools and called on boroughs to make it easier for free schools to open to address the shortage of places. Read more

More children live in poverty now than 50 years ago

Children’s charity’s Greater Expectations published a report that compared the lives of today’s 11-year-olds with historical data. The report found that 3.5 million were living in poverty now, compared to two million in 1969. Read more

'Learning a musical instrument should be compulsory at school'

British band Maximo Park said this week that they would change Britain for the better by making it compulsory for kids to learn a musical instrument in school. Read more

Taking Part 2012/13 Annual Child Report

The recently launched report from DCMS highlights -among other data- that 99% of children aged 5-15 engaged with the arts in the last year, with 92% engaging regularly, representing significant increases since 2008/09.

BFI Film Academy Scheme 2013-4

The BFI Film Academy has launched on its website information and videos of this scheme which offers a real chance for talented 16-19-year-olds to be part of the UK's future film industry. Read more

Artswork open courses

The youth arts development agency is offering two courses for arts practitioners working with young people in the arts and cultural sector. If you are a freelance practitioner go here. If you are interested in developing and running youth arts projects go here.

Stratford Rising Festival

A weekend full of games, performances, arty activities, storytelling, dance, poetry, music and circus for children, young people and families. Read more

Record number of students receiving private tuition

Almost one in four parents is now paying for extra lessons to help improve their children's grades and give them a better chance of winning places at the best schools and universities. Read more

Playing Up

The National Youth Theatre is offering a free accredited drama course for NEET young people aged 18-14 years old. For more information contact the Playing Up team at 020 3696 7066 or email them at playingup@nyt.org.uk

Arts in school: What, Why and How

A two day FREE CPD event for Primary Teachers in Lambeth, Southwark and Tower Hamlets. The event aims to discover exactly where art fits into the new proposed national curriculum for art and design. Our CEO Steve Moffitt will be one of the speakers at the event. For reservations send an email to artinschools@tate.org.uk