A blog written by Jeanne Hale, Head of Bridge North East (Maternity) and previously Specialist Adviser for Creativity at Newcastle Council.
It has been a time of significant change across the education sector. We have been watching the changing landscape of schools and wondering what difference it will make and will it be positive one? It is rapid change and making us all conscious of how we communicate offers for children and young people and who we contact in schools. Currently the impact is still emerging but what we do see are new and different relationships e.g. Learning Trusts within Local Authorities and alliances of Teaching Schools that are across local authority boundaries.
Newcastle City Council Arts Team, itself subject to the ravages of local authority funding cuts, had the opportunity in partnership with Bridge North East to test these emerging relationships and see how the new partnerships might expand the delivery of high quality opportunities for cultural engagement by children and young people. What if this new landscape changed the interaction between the education and cultural sector?
In Newcastle there are a number of new Learning Trusts. An invitation went out for clusters of schools to engage in a ‘Cultural Collaborators’ programme. The name had negative connotations of collusion…and in some contexts treason! …but in a positive sense we wanted groups of teachers who would come together as associates in an activity, endeavour or sphere of common interest... developing a cultural offer in the curriculum.
Lead teachers were asked what was currently offered in their schools, encouraged to look at planning i.e. where would a cultural intervention add value and enhance learning. They looked at how they currently find partners; commonly an organisation they knew and had previously worked with or recommended by other schools. There was a clear feeling that outside that knowledge it was ‘risky’ territory. Whilst they would happily tender for other services in school tendering for cultural activity was new to then. Supported in looking at new ways of engaging with organisations and artists they were given models of how to write a tender to go out to the arts sector, how to judge applications and supported in the selection process. Some trained as Arts Award advisors and delivered Arts Award as of their work
A result of the work is that there is an emerging network of skilled, knowledgeable and culturally engaged teachers able to commission work for their own schools rather than waiting for offers to come to them. Building the model around the Learning Trusts created a supportive network of teachers with a shared context and common knowledge. All schools are linked to NCAN the Northern Cultural Ambassadors Network and to an Arts Award Network.
We know that the impact of leadership in schools is significant and the project worked best where there was a highly supportive and engaged senior management. The size of the cluster also appeared to be crucial where smaller group of schools worked together and shared learning more effectively.
The programme has given the Arts Team an opportunity to combine its traditional role of community arts development with cultural and creativity in education, giving a more joined up service to a community…’the programme has informed the way we will work with schools in the future leading to future partnership arrangements’.
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