Parklane Primary School
July 2014. 120 young people
Leaders:
- Danielle Corbishley
- Nick Garnet
Arts Award Advisor
- Rob Gilmour
Two music leaders worked on this project, they were supported by classroom teachers and TAs. The Arts Award advisor was not involved in the active delivery of the sessions.
Young People:
- 120 young people
- Mixed backgrounds & gender
- Wide range of academic abilities
- 0 achieved Arts Award at Discover level
Context:
Park Lane is a popular and well established primary school situated in Tilehurst.
This was the first time the school had worked on an Arts Award project and the first time that Readipop had worked on one on such a large scale.
The lead teacher attended a Reading CAN networking event all about Arts Award, where they got to find out what the Arts Award was, meet the Readipop and Jelly Team’s and then meet a series of practioneers working in different arts forms. At the event Readipop invited proposals from the schools present on running their own Arts Award project.
The school came back with an ambitious project, working across four classes, linking in with their school arts week and working with two artists they had met at the networking event.
Approach:
The school met with Readipop to discuss and plan the programme of work. They wanted to work with two artists across four classes in the school. Additionally they wanted this to link in with the school arts week. The theme for arts week was ‘eyes’ and the pupils would undertake several different activities that linked in with the theme, from finding out about artists to making different sorts of art, most of these linked in with the arts award.
The school and Readipop agreed that each young person would keep a log of their week and that this log would become their arts log. They also gave the school a list of criteria that must be in the arts log in order for the young person to gain their Arts Award.
Readipop coordinated with the artists when to visit the school and to link in with the schools theme.
Danielle Corbishley went to the school and ran drama workshops based around the eye and sight, she also talked about her work and being a drama practitioner for a living.
Nick Garnet came into the school and made an interactive sculpture “The Eye of the Storm” which some of the young people helped make and others came into experience.
The plan was that young people would take part in their school arts week, making their logs, and that the outside artist would come in and supplement the process with additional expertise and experiences the school wouldn’t be able to offer. The Arts Award Advisor and Readipop were to be involved in the planning and coordination of the project, then the assessing of the arts logs.
Readipop collected the Arts Logs and took them away to assess, at this point the project stopped running so smoothly. The amount of time each arts log took to asses had been grossly underestimated. Furthermore all of the logs from each class were slightly different and missing key evidence for the young people’s Arts Awards, with the time taken to asses the logs the school year was over, leaving no time for a follow up meeting with the school or additional work to help get them through the arts awards.
Readipop left it several months before contacting the school to discuss evaluation and case studies, with hindsight this was a mistake as it should have been done much nearer the time, and the school declined to take part in any follow up work, case studies or evaluations.
Issues arising, improvements and advice:
- Arts Award Advisor not actively delivering/being involved with sessions means that key evidence or elements of the Arts Award can be missed.
- Teacher not being Arts Award advisor means that they may not be completely aware of evidence required.
- When trying to link in with another programme or scheme of work (in this case arts week) it need to be planned incredibly carefully in order to ensure that nothing gets missed.
- The biggest issue on this project was simply being over ambitious it was one of the first Arts Award projects Readipop had delivered and undertaking the assessment of 120 arts logs is a hugely time consuming task that wasn’t properly factored in.
- It may have been better to select a small group of students working on Art Awards to asses those etc, especially as a first step for the school. Although this does open questions about how to select those students if it’s linking in with another scheme of work.
- Communication between Readipop and the school was not as good as it should have been, on a project like this regular meetings/conversations need to be scheduled in so that all parties are aware of the projects progress.
Impact:
Form this project onwards Readipop focussed on offering smaller project relating to the Arts Award, working with targeted groups of young people and in much closer partnership with the school.
The school was able to have it’s arts week supplemented by professional artists coming in to work with and inspire the pupils.