Kadir Karababa, Arts Coordinator - Orchard Primary School, Hackney
Building local networks to support aspiration
As an arts leader
working in a culturally diverse primary school, Kadir was concerned that the
children he taught weren’t represented on stage or in arts audiences. He also
saw that visiting artists, while good professionals, also weren’t generally
representative of his pupils: given these circumstances, he wondered how
aspiration and modeling could most effectively happen, so that his students
felt that the arts could be ‘for them’. His project focused on creating greater
awareness of the arts both among young people but critically among their
parents and carers, many of whom have little or no connection to the arts. He
drew on his own background as a Turkish language speaker to begin building a
network of arts professionals to engage with his school, and used social media
to share info about free local and London-wide arts activities parents could
take advantage of.
Maggie Delwiche, Key Stage 1 Leader - West Thornton Primary Academy, Croydon
The year of saying ‘yes’
After returning from
maternity leave, Maggie felt she needed to jump-start her own sense of
excitement in teaching and decided to focus on saying ‘yes’ to as many
opportunities as she could manage, whether watching recommended TED talks,
reading articles, or attending conferences and events. She decided to focus
also on joy and beauty; she kept a journal, took a puppetry workshop at the
National Theatre, and collected images she liked. Maggie felt that her positive
and adventurous focus on discovery and learning fed into her teaching, and
particularly helped her to develop another project focusing on wellbeing for
both staff and students at her school. Maggie plans to continue being brave,
taking risks, asking questions, and creating the opportunity for positive
change.
Emma Stiman, Arts Lead, Colville Primary School - Kensington & Chelsea
Making the case for dance in primary school
Emma was frustrated
that her primary school had no specialist dance teacher. She put the case to
her head teacher, but was initially rebuffed. Slowly and patiently, Emma built
a stronger case and put it again to her head, noting among other things that
Ofsted has identified dance as a key tool for building positive body image and
as an early intervention in combating obesity in young people. She offered to
support this role with robust evaluation; her head relented and found funding
for a dance specialist and after two terms of work the positive results of this
were clear to the entire school. Emma’s project demonstrated the value of
standing your ground when something is important and also of making a clear
case for - and evaluating the impact of - dance and other arts subjects,
particularly in times of tight budgets for both primary and secondary school.
Kate Wheeldon, SEND Teacher and Creative Arts Lead - Perseid School, Merton
Creating a level arts playing field for SEND children
Children with severe disabilities often struggle to access the arts because venues and transport often aren’t able to easily accommodate them, for instance a lack of step-free access. After being frustrated at not finding local, accessible arts activities for her pupils she realised that if she couldn’t take pupils to arts activities, she’d bring arts activities to them. Thus was born the Perseid Community Arts Club, which has begun in her school and uses available facilities and in-school talent supplemented by local artists and support from arts organisations. The new project has the support of Kate’s headteacher and governors, along with fellow staff members, who were inspired and convinced by Kate’s leadership. The arts club opens in earnest this autumn.
