Creative Partnerships at Fulbridge School

A creative arts project involving staff and reception children from Fulbridge Primary School  in Peterborough and St Mary’s Catholic  Primary School in Grantham was led by Katie Smith of The Thinking Bridge and co-ordinated for the Creative Partnerships programme by The Mighty Creatives, the young people's creative development agency for the East Midlands. High/Scope training sessions were provided by Mary Barlow and Barbara Thomas at The Totem Pole, an early years training and resource centre based in Grantham.
Creative Partnerships was developed by the last Government in 2002 as a flagship programme to develop creative teaching and learning in English schools. The programme brings creative workers such as artists, architects and scientists into schools to work with teachers and to inspire young people and help them learn.

Fulbridge School is a National School of Creativity – one of only 56 in England – and its creative programme is managed by Creativity Culture and Education (CCE). Fulbridge Primary School was paired with St Mary’s Catholic Primary School in Grantham and worked with The Totem Pole to introduce new creative experiences to the children.

Activity

Three reception teachers and three artists at each school worked together for six months, coming together once a month at The Totem Pole to explore an element of High/Scope practice. This then fed into collaborative planning between themselves and each class of reception children, a delivery session and a reflective blog post.

By using this structure it was hoped that pairings would choose to develop a ‘spark’ or ‘lightbulb moment’ into innovative new practice each month and that this would look very different from pair to pair. Learning would scaffold from month to month and planning would be responsive.

The programme would therefore evolve rather than being seen from the start as having a beginning, middle and end, encouraging a culture of reflective practice which placed pupils at the heart of the process.

At Fulbridge School the artists were Gizella Warburton (textiles), Ian Etheridge (sculpture) and Rosie Ward (light installation).

The teachers at St Mary’s Primary School were Christine Duffy and Fran Morton and teaching assistant Anne-Marie Deighton and the artists were Ian Etheridge (sculpture) and Sarah Wakeford (decorative art).

The artists paid regular visits to both schools and at Fulbridge School the children enjoyed puppet theatres, exploring light and shadow, working with wood and discovering a winter wonderland created for them in the playground.

At St Mary’s School the children made sailing boats, interacted with a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ and explored a life-sized teepee courtesy of The Totem Pole.

To share best practice and disseminate new ideas teachers and practitioners recorded their experiences online via blogs and Twitter.

Outcomes

Feedback

“By working with artists not just for one day but over a long period we can develop a really good relationship and the children can see how they develop as artists themselves. The Totem Pole have been brilliant and we’ve really enjoyed the process of working with Mary Barlow and Barbara Thomas and training alongside the artists. Teachers and artists trained together at The Totem Pole in Grantham, which is a lovely setting, and we enjoyed learning about their child-led, creative ethos.”

Charlotte Krzanicki, Creative Co-ordinator and Deputy Head, Fulbridge Primary School

“The Change School project has been a huge success this year. The Reception children have had great fun constructing boats out of wood and have enjoyed using the carpenters’  tools. Older children have interviewed and filmed the project and all the classes have had a chance to go to Reception and find out for themselves what has been happening. Mrs Duffy wrote a blog about the topic and this has been very well received at a national level.”

Linda Heaver, Headteacher, St Mary’s School

“It was a fascinating experience bringing the worlds of the arts and education together. I observed commonalities between us all and quite obvious differences. The common thread surprised me: everyone was feeling quite anxious about the unknown but assumed that everyone else was more comfortable entering into it.

“A very perceptive comment that a young person made during an evaluation conversation resonated with me. She said that during the Creative Partnerships project her teacher had become a learner and that sometimes this was scary for her. From my observations, in both schools the most exciting creative outcomes happened when project participants were challenged to learn, especially when this took them out of their comfort zone.”

Katie Smith, The Thinking Bridge

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