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    <title>Creative Partnerships Upcoming Projects</title>
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    <description>Upcoming projects from creative-partnerships.com</description>
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      <title>Bedlington Station First School a-k-a The Time Institute</title>
      <description><![CDATA[The Time Institute, staffed by dedicated time agents, works to defeat a powerful enemy and safeguard the timeline itself. The premise for the next Dr Who series? The plot of this summer’s next big blockbuster? It’s neither; it’s the work of a Northumberland Creative Partnerships Change School using creative approaches to develop their curriculum.

Bedlington Station First School is in its second year of the Change Schools programme, investigating which purposeful and creative approaches to the development of children’s key learning skills could be embedded in the curriculum in a sustainable way.

In the first year the school had identified six core attributes which should be developed in children:

* *Competent communicators*: children who question, challenge, listen, use appropriate communication to communicate with peers and adults, who respond appropriately and work well in teams;
* *Emotionally literate*: Children who are able to articulate feelings and live alongside others, who are empathetic, make good choices and demonstrate personal and social skills;
* *Independent individuals*: Children who think reflectively, self motivated, self disciplined, open minded, able to make decisions about their own learning;
* *Inquisitive learners*: enquiring minds, a desire to ask, explore, investigate, open minded;
* Confident children: Willing to take risks, confident to succeed/fail, question/challenge, form opinions, accept those of others, embracing strengths and differences;
* *Motivated achievers*: Develop secure basic skills, apply academic skills, eager to persevere, reach personal goals. Independent learners making the right choices.

The first year project aimed to develop creative models which supported curriculum and core attributes and in particular the use of dramatic framework.

The Time Institute project was based around the concept of the Mantle of the Expert, through which the school transformed itself into the government agency called 'The Time Institute'. The children took the role of agents who work in the Institute and gather evidence on events in history in order to protect the information in the Timeline. Each class researched events, questioned eyewitnesses and raced against time to help displaced historical figures.

The evidence they gathered was presented to the Time Council each Friday for inclusion in ‘The Timeline’, a website created by the school. Examples of work undertaken by the agents while working against to clock to stop Vortex - the Time Institute’s arch enemy included -  saving famous works of art from history, investigating famous characters in history who had disappeared from the timeline, investigating evacuees during the second world war and the gunpowder plot, creating animations of missing events in history and keeping the Institute running by completing budgets and reports, all through the device of an agency protecting the timeline.

During the project, pupils became more aware of the core attributes developed in the first year project and working with Lesley Wood their CA developed evaluation systems that helped them to identify which of these they used and which of the attributes they needed to develop further. This allowed them to shape their own learning which led to positive attitudes towards their work and relationships with others. The school saw a significant rise in attainment in writing since starting to work in this way.

The all-staff focus on the development of core attributes led to innovative classroom management and organisation. This in turn gave staff the confidence to try new things and plan in a way that fostered core attribute development, the application of basic skills and an integrated curriculum.

Staff found they were able to reshape the curriculum to take into account of ongoing consultations with the children, which in turn motivated the children further. Staff engaged in CPD to help develop the skills that the children were introduced to during the project, in particular in web design, which the staff plan to use to sustain the development of online work with the children.]]></description>
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      <link>http://www.creative-partnerships.com/in-your-area/northumberland/projects/bedlington-station-first-school-a-k-a-the-time-institute,483,PRO.html</link>
      <pubDate>Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:11:33 GMT</pubDate>
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      <title>Fulbridge-on-Sea - making writing come alive at Fulbridge School</title>
      <description><![CDATA[Fulbridge School is a national School of Creativity in which visitors brush shoulders with the pharaohs in the school's themed corridors, and you're as likely to find children learning on the school's beach or in the caravan as in the classroom. The large primary school in New England, Peterborough, hosts over 130 staff and about 700 pupils from more than 30 different countries.

For their 2010 Schools of Creativity project, Fulbridge decided to investigate how they could make writing come alive, building on the development of their creative curriculum, which they had been working on over the previous five years. They decided to concentrate on offering the children opportunities to explore topics and themes using first hand experiences, visits and celebrations, and write in situation rather than at a distance, in the classroom.  


!! Project objectives

The staff at Fulbridge wanted to challenge the environment in which writing takes place, and investigated starting and finishing a piece of writing in the location of the experience, where the location had inspired and motivated the children. They planned involve the pupils throughout, evaluating the project continually to ensure the children were motivated, challenged, inspired, stimulated and engaged.

In addition, they wanted to develop their staff training and offer opportunities to their broader networks to plan, observe, participate and evaluate in research projects, to not only support their teaching but to encourage their own learning and develop passion and skills, and methods of meaningful reflection.

To achieve this they decided to draw on their local community and network of schools to support and encourage the children to understand the importance of writing as a purposeful tool in everyday life. They aimed to develop links with their local community in offering opportunities to access the school using facilities provided through the school’s children’s centre, crèche and nursery provision, adult classes and other enrichment activities as a starting point to encourage members of the community to participate in a lifelong learning journey.


!! The project

The writing project began with discussions with each year group in the school to identify their topics for the summer term. Following this, the school identified where support was needed for pupil and teachers, the challenges they faced and which groups would benefit most from the project. They decided to focus on Year 3 as the year group which would be most able to support other year groups with similar processes over the next few years. 

The project comprised three strands: creating opportunities for their pupils to explore writing through focusing on key skills by using external creative practitioners to support and encourage alternative structures to writing and motivation; exploring curriculum links with writing through investigating sculpture, film, animation, drama as the tool to success; and capturing, exploring and developing the senses, emotions and vocabulary experienced by children during school trips. 

During the summer term the Year 3 pupils explore the topic 'Beside the Seaside'. Traditionally, this had involved a whole year group visit to one local beach to stimulate and reinforce learning which mainly took place in the classroom, but for the Schools of Creativity project, the teachers split the year group into six groups of fifteen pupils who all visited different seaside locations on the Norfolk coast. They partnered each group with a creative practitioner who accompanied the pupils and their teachers on the trip to engage them in experiences designed to explore their curiosity, intrigue and interest using their initial responses to the environment. The six creative practitioners recruited came from a diverse range of artforms including installation artists, digital media specialists, filmmakers, textile artists, storytellers, writers and poets. 

Each practitioner worked with the pupils collaboratively in the classroom to further explore the school’s thematic approach to creative teaching and learning. Back at the school, as part of the project’s development, they developed a caravan installation (which pupils from the school sourced after developing their own media campaign) and a manmade beach within the school grounds, engaging the whole school and wider community through further developing their outdoor space.

As the staff at Fulbridge were keen to involve the whole school community in their creative project, they decided to recruit a group of ‘mini agents’ from the school’s students, who were a driving force in the planning and interviewing processes for the creative practitioners, and who were involved in attending the trips to capture the responses and feelings of the children through photography, film and sound. 

To further ensure sustainability of the outcomes the school entered into a partnership with a corporate communications company CTN to explore and develop an online learning tool to share our learning with a wider audience using new technologies. The mini agents were involved in developing the relationship with CTN and this year are responsible for creating and managing the content of the online learning resource that we will develop with CTN to share the school’s journey with a wider audience. The partnership also represented the opportunity to create links between the school and creative industries.


!! Results and impact

The young people discovered that learning can take place outside of the classroom and in environments that release boundaries but which are still focused on a specific objective and they have learnt to be flexible, adaptable and engage with different colleagues at different times. 

An unexpected outcome was the use of space, notably the caravan and cellar and the teachers felt that they would now consider using unconventional spaces to stimulate the desire to write. As the Fulbridge-on-Sea project had promoted a process based way of working from the outset the practitioners were surprised by the quality of work produced. The children were surprised by their desire and motivation to write and their change in attitude towards the subject.

The teachers and school staff, learnt to take more risks and trust others’ planning and judgments.  They explored mediums which were unfamiliar and new to their teaching styles and surroundings and embraced them, and in particular, learned that expanding boundaries enables children to explore in greater depth within a context they prefer. 

All project partners felt that the project would have a huge impact on the development of sustainable and creative learning within the school. The rethinking of the school trip illustrated the benefits of taking small groups rather than the whole of a year to explore a seaside location and afforded the time for more one-to-one interaction between teachers and pupils and illustrated the value of free play. The trip highlighted the value of responding to the environment immediately rather than only using these responses back in the classroom. 


!! The future

The Fulbridge teachers intend to use the positive outcomes of the project to develop sustainable and creative learning within the school. Staff from the school will deliver INSET training to schools struggling with their creative journey, using this project as a model of innovative practice. 


]]></description>
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      <link>http://www.creative-partnerships.com/in-your-area/schools-of-creativity/projects/fulbridge-on-sea-making-writing-come-alive-at-fulbridge-school,472,PRO.html</link>
      <pubDate>Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:11:33 GMT</pubDate>
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      <title>Taking Flight</title>
      <description><![CDATA[Lakeview Lower School in Bedford is a new school on reclaimed land whose community is growing around it as houses are built. The head teacher hoped the project would create a launch and celebration involving the whole school and showing their positive achievements and ambitions to the wider community, at the same time developing partnerships with parents. The school also wanted to develop the children’s imagination, thinking skills and their interest in the world around them. They set out to answer the question 'How can we create opportunities for our children to experience the magic of the world around them and develop a sense of pride in their community that will have a lasting impact on the school?'

The project was called 'Taking Flight' to capture the idea of giving wings to creative spirit to launch the school on its new journey.

Taking Flight was launched with a training session for all staff led by carnival artists Simon Tipping from Festive Road and David and Judith Brown from Utopia Mas. The practitioners then worked with 3 groups of children a day to produce two large structures and costumes for every child, based on the creatures that each class is named after: swans, newts, frogs and tadpoles! Staff supported the practitioners between sessions, painting costumes, rehearsing the dancing and practicing the staging of the Carnival.  They used the Creativity Wheel and scrapbooks throughout the project to deepen the children's understanding of creativity and reflect on the process of taking part. They also ran very successful after-school carnival sessions for parents to work on costumes with their children.

The project culminated in a carnival parade around the local area, well supported by parents and the community. It was covered by local news outlets and succeeded in creating the big splash the school had been hoping for.]]></description>
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      <link>http://www.creative-partnerships.com/in-your-area/ukcca/projects/taking-flight,551,PRO.html</link>
      <pubDate>Thu, 1 Sep 2011 12:45:31 BST</pubDate>
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      <title>Brunshaw 2020: Going for Green</title>
      <description><![CDATA[*Creative Approaches to Topic Based Learning*
How can calculating and understanding our carbon footprint provide creative learning opportunities across the whole school, whilst developing community links?

Year 6 pupils participated in a range of creative approaches to Maths to measure the school's carbon footprint.  They then used drama to spread the message and stimulate linked activities across the school. All classes worked with a visual artist to create artwork in the playground which communicated their efforts to reduce their carbon footprint. The Year 6 group became energy-saving ambassadors for the school and continued to monitor the use of energy, and therefore the effectiveness of their advocacy, across the school.]]></description>
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      <img:name><![CDATA[Brunshaw Prrimary School  ]]></img:name>
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      <link>http://www.creative-partnerships.com/in-your-area/lancashire/projects/going-for-green,550,PRO.html</link>
      <pubDate>Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:17:12 BST</pubDate>
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      <title>Art at the Start</title>
      <description><![CDATA[*Hastings and St Leonard's Children's Centre* have been involved in the Creative Partnerships Change Schools programme for the last three years.

The manager of Hastings and St Leonard’s Children’s Centres, Tracey Rose, is responsible for three children’s centres and all the early years settings in the town, including both state and private provision. Hastings and St Leonards is the most deprived district in the South East (according to the Index of Multiple Deprivation) and the 40th most deprived in England. The Children’s Centres play a vital role in community development.
The central ethos of the Hastings Children’s Centres Manager’s approach to her work is based on her knowledge of early years work in Reggio Emilia, Italy (which she has visited). She has, from the start of Creative Partnerships’ involvement with the Centres, had a very clear view of, and well thought out strategy for, partnership working which is based on a sound theoretical base derived from her knowledge of this approach.

Throughout the Change Schools programme creative practitioners have aimed to model approaches which follow the children’s developing interests, contributing to and documenting an increasingly coherent narrative of individual children’s learning.

In the first year, visual artist Jane Gordon worked with one children's centre, in the second year she supervised two further artists and they worked in three settings.

This year as their final year in the programme Hastings and St Leonard’s Children’s Centres asked the question;  _How can early years practitioners become more open ended in their approach to their work with children?_ This has led to *Art at the Start* which is an innovative project to get local creative practitioners working in nurseries in Hastings & St Leonards.

Ten local creative practitioners have been employed on a training bursary led by visual artist Jane Gordon. Creative Practitioners have been payed a nominal fee which covers two and half days of non-delivery time (which includes two days CPD and a half day exhibition) and two sets of four, two hour, sessions in two of the twenty settings involved in the project.]]></description>
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      <img:copyright><![CDATA[Hastings and St Leonard's Children's Centre]]></img:copyright>
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      <link>http://www.creative-partnerships.com/in-your-area/hastings-east-sussex/projects/art-at-the-start,532,PRO.html</link>
      <pubDate>Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:56:17 BST</pubDate>
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