I now work at Gatley as a resident Creative Partner 2 days a week delivering the Arts Award programme, working with Pupil Premium pupils and writing and delivering specific creative lessons for each class and key stage. This fantastic school is head of a cluster group specilising in delivering a creative curriculum across all Key Stages with an emphasis on a ‘Learners Lead’ policy.
I’ve just finished a huge mural on the entrance wall into nursery, made a music tree in the Reception play area and a wooden cityscape that circles the playground. Have been working with most year groups on songs for their assemblies and performances and making new role-play areas for Key Stage 1 classes.
Mr Perloffski (see below) has returned to school (through a trapdoor in the school stage with his spade having dug from Mexico,) to launch a new story writing competition for all year groups. Winning stories will be professionally bound and printed as proper books.
After running a pilot programme in 2013, there are now 88 year 4 and 5 pupils working with me towards their ‘Discover’ level Arts Award and the 9 pupils from the pilot working on the next ‘Explorer’ level. I have just written and delivered a two week long project with the English Team to try and improve literacy and engage pupils in a different way, particularly boys. This has been especially exciting and the outcomes have been fantastic. I will put more information about this shortly with its own post and photos. The initial ‘event’ was delivered in character, prosthetics and costume (!) as Wendel Perloffski, a Russian emigrant lost story collector and his enormous puppet theatre plus a huge range of bizarre and strage ojects all of which had lost their stories. Pupils had the task of ‘finding’ and writing these stories and presenting them in books that ‘weren’t’ books of a regular nature. Wendel returned at the end of the fortnight after bookmaking workshops etc and pupils presented him with their increble results. The legacy of this project is a permanent ‘Cabinet of Curious Things’ which pupils themselves will curate and manage. ..Working with the English Team again, we have just delivered an evening of workshops for parents in how to engage and inspire children to write and read when at home and doing homework. I’ve also been working across the school, building role-play areas for all Key Stage 1 classes and an outdoor ‘den’ classroom space for Year 1.
I worked with fantastic music practitioner Eve Harrison, on a residency at Gatley Primary in 2009, through the Creative Partnerships programme. We worked across the school sometimes together other times individually. The school had the luxury of an empty room in which we designed and built a multi-purpose creative space. Created intially with a jungle/rainforest decor, we created large multi-instrumental music units using junk built into old furniture. Areas were filled with world instruments but the idea was to take away the fear of playing a ‘proper’ instrument by training the pupils to play on strange ‘made’ ones. Space was then created for drawing, painting, printing etc. Inspirational paintings, photos and artwork were filed to be used at will. Creative writing materials and a comfortable area to write were put in place. We trained pupils to create artwork from listening to music and to write from the same influence. We then showed them the reverse processes..using writing or art to inform music and so on. Pupils from each year groups then taught the rest of their peers how to use the space, and then showed their teachers. The space is now a multi-purpose ‘artlab’ with walls that can be written on to reflect, record and question upon.
Other images show the outdoor decorated space created for the nursery with an interactive musical area again using recycled materials.The year 2 classes worked through my Series project, the youngest key stage I’ve used it with and their results were breathtaking.
Published: 12th May 2010
Themes: art creative learning Music project series space writing
