(Student sculptures from St. Philomena’s High School for Girls addressing mental health and wellbeing)
We used Artsmark’s self-assessment framework to conduct a quality assessment of CLC arts programmes. Time and again throughout the 2016-17 programme, we returned to the value of Artsmark as a way of generating discussions, building support and placing arts and culture at the heart (rather than at the periphery) of school development priorities.
Several CLC projects incorporated Artsmark, but a few in particular used it as the driver for larger change. Martine Bruce-Linton, Head of Art at the Priory School, a school focused on severe learning disability, found in Artsmark both a framework for ‘moving art out of the classroom’ and a vehicle for making connections with other schools and arts and culture providers.
Amelia Lind, Art Coordinator at James Wolfe Primary School (Greenwich), also focused her CLC project on achieving Artsmark, and her clear narrative describes how she joined up the arts with key school priorities, thereby amplifying their value.
At St. Philomena’s High School for Girls (Sutton), Art Subject Leader Tim Devenish chose to focus his Artsmark journey on the hot-button issue of wellbeing and mental health, linking existing arts resources to with the school’s in-house art therapist to create new conversations about this topic. The final work was exhibited in central London, thereby extending the conversation and value of the work.
In the second half of our session, we began to turn our minds towards our final projects. We’d said from the start that we wanted projects to be meaningful and useful to participants; we also said that small steps were as welcomed as huge strides. All projects needed to:
- clearly contribute to participants’ professional development e.g. further develop strengths, address areas for development:
- be something participants were excited and motivated about:
- utilise the strengths and/or networks or connections in the group:
- be deliverable by June 2017.
We used a storyboarding tool to plot out our projects, the end result of which you’re seeing throughout this Yearbook.
Further resources
- Session 3 blog
Read here - The Artsmark self-assessment framework is a clear, concise way to frame and discuss your school’s arts and culture offer. You needn’t be an Artsmark school to use it.
Find out more - Much of Artsmark, particularly the self-assessment framework, is built upon Arts Council England’s quality principles, which offer clear guidance on quality from an arts and culture perspective.
Find out more - On the evening of our final CLC session, A New Direction hosted an event unveiling this new and compelling video promoting the value of Artsmark for London schools.
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