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The Teacher – Artist Exchange at the Broadway Gallery

Published: 12 June 2025 
Author: Sarah Golding 
Professional learning session with teachers and artists. Photo credit: Charlotte Turner.

Sarah Golding, Head of Arts, Culture and Heritage at Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation, reflects on the uniqueness of the Teacher Development Fund and the opportunities it has created within their project to foster deep learning and development and genuine exchange.

Letchworth is the world’s first garden city; the town’s original blueprint was devised to support a healthy and positive living environment for all, and the Heritage Foundation’s Broadway Gallery still maintains these values today. Letchworth’s rich arts and crafts traditions are still thriving, with the town home to many practicing artists and makers of all ages and abilities.

Although Letchworth is seemingly leafy, its community is economically challenged; 30% of our town’s population lives in social housing, compared to a 16% national average. These challenges continue in the wake of the pandemic, with the Gallery’s established network of primary teachers telling us, like so many others in the country, that they are stretched to capacity supporting the growing social and emotional needs of the children in their classrooms. This need for support was starkly demonstrated when in November 2023, Ofsted awarded Hertfordshire the lowest possible rating for a local area SEND partnership.

In response to this, and in partnership with key headteachers, we devised the Teacher – Artist Exchange, connecting the Gallery’s established network of local creatives with Letchworth primary teachers to work together to explore how visual arts can support children’s broader social, emotional and mental health needs. 

Now nearing the end of its first year, the programme has partnered with seven schools within the town and has involved: 

  • CPD days with artists and teachers
  • Inspirational away days 
  • Individual artist and teacher relationship pairings
  • Artist time within the classroom and leading wider staff CPD
  • Mentoring sessions and reflection time

What have we discovered during this first year?

  1. Learning to let go! One of this funding stream’s precious and unique opportunities is Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s support to generate programmes iteratively, responding to the learning gained along the way. Here at the Broadway Gallery, we have structured, then restructured and then restructured again! We’ve understood that this doesn’t mean we’re getting it wrong, rather that we are listening, responding and supporting an organic process. Teachers have also talked about letting go – how they’re usually required to take children’s thinking from A to B. During this process, we don’t know where B is… in fact, B may never exist! By letting go and trusting in the discoveries made, a deeper level of change is made possible.
  2. Swimming upstream: Unfortunately, we had to lose one of our schools from the programme at the end of this first year. Even though the teachers involved were committed to taking the creative risks the programme requires, a change of leadership between the project’s conception and realisation has meant a different set of priorities are now being set within the school. We’ve understood that this work just can’t happen without that wider infrastructural support; headteacher/​SLT buy-in is essential.
  3. Art is messy! There’s been a paradigm shift within us all that has shown visual art in itself isn’t necessarily inclusive. It brings its own barriers (“I can’t draw” or ​“I don’t want to get messy”), and through the exchange between artist skills and teacher pedagogy, simple strategies are being explored to remove these barriers that can then enable the children to engage in a way that will better support the fundamental wellbeing outcomes central to the project’s rationale. The exchange is key to this; discovery is only possible through the very combination of both the artists and teachers’ skills, valuing both sets of expertise in the mix.

As we move into year 2, we’ve continued to refine various aspects of the programme in collaboration with our partner teachers. This ongoing development serves as a living example of the evolving, responsive nature of the learning at its core.

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Head of Arts, Culture and Heritage at Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation