(Image: Ballot boxes for Student Arts Committee voting at Hurlingham School)
There was a good deal of nervousness amongst our group about networking, with quite a few people feeling it was a ‘magical skill’ that ‘some people had and others just didn’t. The following top tips generated by our group show that we all have something to offer in a networking context, and that it’s a skill that can be learned:
- Passing on people’s details, e.g., someone who might help someone in your network
- Sharing expertise and experience in context
- Sharing information, e.g., job opportunities on Facebook, other social media
- Pupil voice, whether for studies or other activities...teachers are the gatekeepers and can offer essential 'insider' knowledge about working with children
- Problem-solving and troubleshooting
- Honest opinion and feedback
- Work experience
- Professional experience, e.g., multi-sensory learning
The following exercises, which we used in our networking session, can help reveal both the gaps and opportunities in our current networks.
EXERCISE
Who’s in your network?
Given networking can provide so much; support, feedback, insight, resources and information, it can be useful to understand and map whose in our networks and where we might want to develop certain areas.
- Who have you forgotten?
- What are the overlaps?
- What areas are the strengths?
- What areas are you currently underutilising?
EXERCISE
The power of networks
Each teacher is given and envelope. On the outside of the envelope write a question/issues you would like solved. Place this on the floor.
The group reads the problem/issue and responds on a post-it note and places this inside the envelope.
EXERCISE
At your next staff meeting or with a small group of colleagues spend 20 minutes reviewing the following quotes. Write down your initial response/thoughts to each one on a separate post-it note and stick it next to the relevant quote.
Networking is marketing. Marketing yourself, marketing your uniqueness, marketing what you stand for.
Christine Comaford-Lynch, founder of First Professional Bank
The currency of real networking is not greed but generosity.
Keith Ferrazz, Entrepreneur and CEO, Greenlight Research Institute
The richest people in the world look for and build networks; everyone else looks for work.
Robert T. Kiyosaki, author
Pulling a good network together takes effort, sincerity and time.
Alan Collins, author
Life favours the specific ask and punishes the vague wish.
Tim Ferris, entrepreneur and writer “4hour working week”.
Follow this up with a group discussion about the culture of networking in your school, how you can support and expand each other’s networks as well as sharing any tips and advice in this area.
Networking was at the heart of several CLC projects. Matthew Lamptey, PPA Teacher and Arts Coordinator at the Crescent Primary School (Croydon), sought to establish a framework for the arts at his newish school through Arts Award and did so with the support of a huge array of arts partners that definitely stretched the six degrees of separation theory by a few more ‘degrees’!
We were fortunate to have three SEND schools represented on CLC 16-17. For SEND schools, networks and partnerships are everything: they rely heavily on external, specialist providers for everything from therapy to transport.
The CLC project presentation by David Nelson, Curriculum Lead at Linden Lodge School (Wandsworth), is a fantastic primer in the particular challenges of SEND schools and also in how the arts can make a meaningful impact in ways that are truly unique.
Further resources
- Session 4 blog.
Read here - Module 4 of AND’s Teachers’ Toolkit for the Arts specifically focuses on partnerships, including models of best practice in how to source, hire, plan and evaluate partnerships.
Download here - A useful blog about how to maximise networking opportunities.
Read here - ANDTogether is a site designed for London teachers to connect more effectively with more than 600 arts and culture organisations.
Visit the website - The Creative People and Places Project has published three case studies that explore arts partnership development in-depth. Though not specifically aimed at schools, they are nonetheless fascinating and useful in understanding how to build partnerships with arts organisations.
Find out more
