Paul Hamlyn Foundation

Voices for the Future is a collaboration between Collage Arts, Alexandra Palace and a cohort of five Haringey primary schools, led by Alexandra Primary. Arts practitioners and teachers will develop and embed a multi-disciplinary arts approach to teaching and learning with a particular focus on improving oracy.

Attain Academy Partnership, on behalf of the Chelmsford Teaching Schools Alliance, will lead this project, working with Essex Music Services and London Music Masters. Teachers will be supported to embed music-based approaches to learning, based on the Kodály method, across the Early Years and Foundation Stage curriculum, extending into Keystage 1 in the second year. The initiative aims to improve school readiness amongst pupils and to foster personal, social, communications, and language development.

School Without Walls aimed to transpose ‘school’ into an arts environment or cultural setting, inviting teachers and children to interrogate and reshape teaching and learning in and through the arts. The programme sought to transform teachers’ ‘philosophies as educators’ and give children ownership to explore and express their ideas and engage with the arts and culture in their locality. The project was run by the Bath Cultural Education Partnership – a partnership between 5x5x5=Creativity, the Egg Theatre, Bath Festivals, Mentoring Plus and Bath Spa University Institute for Education. This pilot project ran from June 2016 to July 2017.

Creativity Hive is an enquiry-based immersive programme focusing on lower KS2 to raise engagement and attainment in English, using music and journalistic digital media. Exploring text using music, the project seeks to build solid foundations in oracy, vocabulary, reading and comprehension. The programme aims to improve writing and close the progress gap for vulnerable children.

In Wales, Cerdd Iaith/Listening to Language is exploring new approaches to music and language learning. Year 6 classroom teachers from ten primary schools in South West Wales are  working with orchestral musicians to pilot a new approach to the teaching of modern foreign languages through sound components such as pitch, rhyme, repetition and rhythm, embedding these within music. The project is a partnership between British Council Wales and BBC National Orchestra of Wales with the University of Wales Trinity Saint David School of Education and Communities, and Ein Rhanbarth ar Waith.

Castle Hill School, a SEND specialist setting, will lead a group of SEND specialist and mainstream primary schools based in and around Huddersfield. They will partner with The Colour Foundry, working with teachers and school leaders to develop learning through traditional and digital visual arts- and music-based practices. They will aim to embed inclusion and celebration of individuality at the heart of teaching practice.

Southwark Teaching School Alliance and Shakespeare’s Globe are collaborating to train teachers and leaders in eight Southwark primary schools to incorporate drama techniques into their classroom practice. The project will see Year 1 and Year 3 teachers from each school take part in professional development led by Globe practitioners. Actors will work alongside teachers in their classrooms, using dramatic storytelling techniques to support the children’s development in speaking, reading and writing. The second year of the project will see the same teachers embed their learning into their school’s curriculum, leading their own professional development sessions for staff and creating a unit of work to incorporate the new approaches.

A partnership between MAKE, Knit Shop and Dundee Creative Learning Network, this is an ambitious new career-long professional learning project, which explores the value and potential of teaching craft in primary school with professional textile makers, working across different disciplines. The programme is designed to embed craft approaches to numeracy development across six to eight primary schools in Dundee and aims to develop teachers’ skills, confidence and ambition in teaching craft, whilst unlocking learning across the curriculum.

In Scotland, the Art of Learning programme focuses on supporting teachers to embed a range of arts-based practices which allow pupils to develop their executive functions and creativity skills. Pre-designed activities to develop executive functions are based on a theory of learning; these stress the value of complex tasks which simultaneously engage children socially, emotionally, physically and intellectually, and the importance of high-functioning learning. The project is formed of a partnership between Creative Scotland, Education Scotland, and Creativity, Culture and Education.

Teachers, support staff and school leaders from six Derby primary schools will partner with artists from Derby Theatre to learn and embed drama-based and creative approaches to support students to develop language skills and to build their confidence and interpersonal skills. Participating schools have a higher than average intake of pupils who speak English as an additional language and/or serve communities experiencing socio-economic inequity.