Creative practitioner Amy Robinson worked with Nursery and Year 6 pupils worked with Amy Robinson and the and the church sewing group to create a new school banner that was a symbolic representation of the school.   

The school is currently undergoing a complete re-build and as reflections of the past converge with a vision of the future a project has emerged and been embraced by the school and wider community. 

Memories, experiences, anecdotes and photographs have been recorded and shared in this cross-generational community project. Pupils and practitioners, with help from families and the community have worked together to create a multi-media drama production that was performed at St Gabriel's Church in Huyton on 15 July at 2.00pm and 6.30pm.

The project has encouraged positive links with parents and actively engaged them in the life of the school and their children's learning. 

Our termly networking events are an important part of the Creative Partnerships programme and are designed to build links between schools and support coordinators in their role.

The focus of projects this year have included Mantle of the Expert, developing leadership skills, engaging parents, drama and enterprise, curriculum re-design and research into pupils' perception of the school environment.  All the projects have placed consultation with pupils and staff at their heart, encouraging creativity in decision making and leadership skills.

The teachers talked about their pupils being more engaged, motivated and outgoing in lessons and teaching assistants and teachers who had become focused and enthused. At a recent Ofsted inspection one school had an increased number of lessons identified as outstanding.

I always look forward to these days. I go away with momentum and ideas for what to do next 

Emma McNicoll, Brunshaw Primary School

The Gold Arts Award has been awarded 35 Tariff points by UCAS. This compares to AS Level qualification C Grade (40 points), Higher Sports Leader Award (30 points) and Music Theory Examinations Grade 8 Distinction (30 points).

Students applying to University for the 2011/12 academic year who have achieved a Gold Arts Award will be able to include it as they would do other subjects when completing their UCAS application form.

Curious Minds are offering Gold Award top-up training for advisers on Thursday, September 30 in Preston.  Visit the Arts Award website to book your place. For more information about arts award gold click here 

These schools will be working with us from September and engaging in an intensive programme that explores creative teaching and learning and how schools can become effective creative learning environments.

All of the successful schools have demonstrated a commitment to putting creativity at the heart of their improvement plans and to educating children and young people for a creative future.

The newly appointed schools are:

Hillside Community Primary School, Skelmersdale
Lomeshaye Junior School, Nelson
Mossgate Primary School, Heysham
Northern Primary School, Bacup
St John’s Catholic Primary School, Poulton-le-Fylde
St Mary and St Benedict’s RC Primary School, Bamber Bridge
St Mary’s Catholic Technology College, Leyland
Walton-le-Dale Arts College and High School, Bamber Bridge

Creativity, Culture & Education (CCE) is launching a new website called Tell Us TV. CCE, the national arts education charity, is asking all children and young people to upload their videos to Tell Us TV detailing why arts and culture is important to them.

Experiences in arts and culture are proven to be vital in enabling children and young people to unlock their talent and realise their potential. They contribute in powerful ways to personal development, enhancing life skills as well as building confidence. In launching the Tell Us TV website, CCE will learn more about how a wide range of young people access arts and culture, what types of activity they are interested in and what they want to achieve in terms of their own talents and creativity.  

At a time of funding cuts to the arts it is vital that we know more about children’s experiences with arts and culture to enable us to build for the future.

Paul Collard, Chief Executive, CCE 

CCE is launching the new website alongside a month-long tour of England with its Tell Us Bus. The bus will visit events including Coventry’s Godiva Festival as well as schools, youth centres and cultural hubs across England. CCE be asking thousands of 7-19 year-olds about their experiences, hobbies and activities on board the full-size double-decker Tell Us Bus. The results of the Tell Us Bus tour will be collated into a report prepared by young people, which will be announced in October 2010.

CCE is the national organisation which aims to transform lives by harnessing the potential of creative learning and cultural opportunity. CCE manages England’s flagship creative learning programme Creative Partnerships. For further information on Creativity, Culture & Education visit www.creativitycultureeducation.org and for the Tell Us Bus tour see www.tellustv.co.uk

This was the opening sentence of a story created by children at St Edward's Catholic Primary School in Runcorn, Halton.

All year groups have been working with children's author Hilary Keating to talk about what's good about stories and what's difficult about writing them.

On a huge roll of paper spread on the floor, children offloaded their problem areas: keeping going with writing, spelling, full stops and finger spaces. Children could see they weren't the only ones struggling with these challenges. Hilary then facilitated children to create stories as a group, taking the pressure off each individual. To help with spelling each child made a word bag in which they collected difficult words they wanted to use, to refer to when writing.

Alice Demba, Programme Manager, observed a Year 1 group practice a technique Hilary had developed to help them structure their stories. Children explained to Alice the significance of the following stages of story writing

Opening line • Setting • Character • Problem • Solution 

Children used the fingers on one hand to memorise these tricks. Sitting in a circle they shouted them out to Alice and then began to work through each stage. Lots of children contributed ideas for the story and the class voted for their favourites. They described a house in a forest, some sad flowers whose petals were falling off and a fairy coming to the rescue with glue and sellotape.

Now that they had their basic story structure, Hilary and the staff let children transform their classroom space into the setting, to inspire them. Splitting into groups, children took over each corner of the classroom and used bamboo poles, cloth, pegs, masking tape, scissors, pens and paper to create a forest, flowers, a house and the sky. Then someone from each group described their setting. One boy in the 'sky' group created 'soft, comfy clouds' that he could sit on to watch the flowers and the fairy in the forest. Another boy spread out sparkly cloth which was 'the sun shining on water'.

As a result of the project, children are able to tick off the problem areas on their big sheet of paper, knowing that they have found solutions. And staff have seen children's story structure, spelling, full stops and finger spaces improve dramatically, what a result!

TSL aims to co-ordinate advice and support, be an advocate for the third sector and increase the level of collaboration between organisations in order to improve delivery.

With the growth of the new culture of increased commissioning of services by local authorities, this is an excellent time for the cultural sector to demonstrate its professionalism and effectiveness. Of course there will be challenges, and Curious Minds hopes to be able to support other cultural organisations build their capacity to become ‘commission ready’ through a programme of advice and training. We’re grateful to Ben Hunt and colleagues from Prescap who have been pursuing this agenda for some time now, and with whom we are working in partnership to better understand commissioning.

As a first step for Lancashire organisations – sign up to TSL’s website you’ll find plenty of useful information and hopefully increase your awareness of the possibilities of working with other Third sector partners across the county.

On 14 May we met with Creative Agents and the University of Chester B.Ed programme leaders to discuss Cheshire's pilot enquiry school programme.

This programme is different from the classic Enquiry Schools programme, as it has a focus on teaching outside the classroom and ITT (initial teacher training).

This programme has been an example of co-construction between all partners, and relationships between settings, external partners and primary schools are contributing to enriching and informing the learning of year 2 B.Ed teacher trainees. This has offered valuable additional layers of learning that will be examined, evaluated and celebrated, leading to an improved model for ITT.

John Stephens Director of Children's Services, Cheshire West and Chester will be attending a presentation at Brookside Primary School, where year 6 pupils have worked in partnership with Catalyst Science Discovery Centre and Museum, looking at how creative approaches and enterprise, inspired by an outside learning experience can help to develop confidence, collaboration and independence for year 6 pupils. In small groups, pupils will use a stimulus from the setting to create a new idea for Catalyst and pitch it to them. The winning ideas will be put into production at the Centre.

Working with Creative Partnerships schools across the North West, Creative Agents will facilitate:

• Diagnosis of how creativity will support the delivery of the School Development Plan
• Planning and brokerage of external creative partners from a diverse range of backgrounds
• Monitoring and evaluation using the National Creative Partnerships Projects Database
• Change, project and time management, to meet set deadlines

Creative Agents are paid £250 per day for their work in schools. You will have the opportunity to work with Enquiry Schools (6 days per year) and Change Schools (15 days per year). Creative Agents will work primarily in either Lancashire or Merseyside and Cheshire, though deployment will be discussed during interviews. You will also need to attend five days of Continuing Professional Development in either area organised by Curious Minds, for which you will be paid £200 per day.

Your excellent interpersonal skills will enable you to facilitate partners to develop partnerships, project plans and monitoring and evaluation processes that lead to high quality evidence of change. Your experience of writing clear, concise reports will support partners to summarise this evidence, enabling Curious Minds to communicate and advocate at a local and national level. Your ability to manage your own time effectively will help you negotiate and meet deadlines with schools. Your experience of brokering partnerships will support schools to manage a range of practitioners who work with school staff to deliver teaching and learning for creativity.

To apply please download the following douments: 

Application Form

Data Collection Form

Creative Agent Service Specification 

To discuss this opportunity please contact Alice Demba at the Liverpool office or email alice.demba@curiousminds.org.uk  

The deadline for receipt of applications is 5pm Thursday 17 June 2010.

Interviews will be w/c Monday 19 July 2010; we will contact you with details if your application is successful.

Participants came away with an understanding of the context for safeguarding children, young people and vulnerable adults in their work, as well as useful information on the statutory framework and how the new Independent Safeguarding Authority impacts on them and their existing CRB clearances.

This training is part of a series of sessions Simon has been delivering for Curious Minds staff, Creative Agents and practitioners on our directory in both Merseyside and Lancashire. 

Simon's top tip for freelance practitioners is to apply for ISA registration in the summer, the ISA website states: "From July 2010, individuals can apply for ISA registration and a CRB check (including an ISA check) on one new application form".  Further information is available at www.isa-gov.org.uk.

"My third safeguarding course in the past twelve months and by far the most useful"

The strength of the three primary schools application lay in their partnership with each other as Change Schools and their ethos of creative collaboration with their school communities, including families.

The money has been awarded to develop outdoor learning and the schools will be working with staff and pupils to design their own curriculum tailored to the specific needs of each school. 

Economic well-being is high on the agenda for these schools and this will be highlighted at a Sefton Education Business partnership conference on Wednesday 26 May, where they will be running workshops to share practice. The conference is open to all Primary schools in Sefton, to book a place visit www.sefton.gov.uk

• Targeting NQTs for whom we can run a whole year of creative CPD
• Sharing knowledge and celebrating progress more effectively, in innovative web site and blog postings
• Investing in training and resourcing practitioners, possibly through a practitioner forum
• Capitalising on the groundbreaking work Curious Minds agents broker, that lead to imagined worlds that engage children in exciting and developmental experiential learning.
• Creative partnerships to support community cohesion programmes that build trust and open up positive and constructive dialogue within communities.

Chris May emphasised that we need to be 'commissioning ready' to deliver these packages and processes to Local Authorities and schools.

The seminar began with a provocation from Accrington Academy in the form of a film created by students. They asked delegates to use the following questions as a stimulus for discussion:

• Culture, what culture – does Britain have a culture?
• Community – what is our community?
• Safe, how safe? To feel safe in our community should we take risks?
• Us, who us? Do you really know us and are you really ready to let us decide what we talk about?
• How can schools build connected learning communities?

Delegates then moved in to the school’s auditorium where five creative practitioners were stationed, each tasked with working with participants to develop a creative response to one of the above questions. Creative activities involved the creation of a large 3D wooden cane structure, a happy families card game, a huge wall painting, a ‘risk’ installation and the creation of a large floor map of the United Kingdom.

Following this lively and engaging session, delegates heard brief presentations from Superintendent Andy Pratt of Lancashire Constabulary, Andy O’Brien, deputy head at Accrington Academy and Chris May, Chief Executive of Curious Minds. Each presenter provided interesting examples of how creative approaches and collaboration have supported young people in engaging in challenging conversations and connecting them more effectively with both the school and wider community. The evening was rounded off with a group discussion where participants shared the ideas stimulated by the evening’s activities and went away with new ideas to take back into their own settings, particularly in relation to developing creative approaches to addressing difficult issues with young people and to developing learning settings that are more effectively connected both to one another and to the wider community.

A full podcast of the event will soon be available on CCE’s website www.creativitycultureeducation.org

A programme is under development with local authority partners in Knowsley, Liverpool and St Helens that will aim to 'get real' about overcoming the barriers to schools having in place ambitious after-school and holiday club programmes, in which: external partners routinely deliver alongside teachers within an integrated workforce; young people's interests, talents and needs are the bottom-line; and arts, culture and creativity play a central role, improving the educational outcomes, wellbeing, life skills and future prospects of all those taking part.

Bespoke Services
We are developing a portfolio of bespoke services that schools and local authorities can commission directly from us. If you want to maximise the outcomes of this critical year for Extended Services - as Disadvantage Subsidy pilot programmes are staged across the North West and central investment remains high- contact Chris Finn, Director of Programmes for a speculative chat at chris.finn@curiousminds.org.uk

 The website aims to do the following:

Connect - Help you to network with partners across different disciplines, creating new collaborations. Help you to find the right creative practitioners to enhance your project from a database of approved practitioners.

Inspire - Build a body of case studies to inspire creative approaches and learn from other activity across Pennine Lancashire and beyond, including developing a toolkit of approaches to help develop projects.

Resource - Signpost to funding streams as they become available.

Advocate - Help share the good practice you are developing and delivering and use this to influence at a strategic level, unlocking resource & embedding processes through policy.

Please make sure you register your details so you can have access to greater information on realted to the project, recieve e-mail updates of new case studies as well as funding and project opportunities.

www.curiousproject6.org.uk

Communications Manager

Salary:            £22,687 - £25,825

Contract:         Full time, fixed term to 31st March 2011

                      (extension expected, subject to future funding agreement)

Location:         Burnley, Lancashire

Closing date:   Noon on Monday 28th June 2010

Interview date: Thursday 8th July 2010

We are seeking an experienced Communications Manager to ensure the effective delivery of our Communications Strategy leading to an increased awareness of Curious Minds and our services to our partners, stakeholders and the wider public.

Working with the Management Team of Curious Minds you will develop and deliver the Communications Strategy through implementing a clear action plan which will include; the development of our website and online social networking platforms; the production and distribution of targeted marketing and advocacy materials; raising our profile within the press and media sector and continued brand development.

Educated to degree level or equivalent within a relevant communications subject, you will have a minimum of two years communications work experience within the creative and cultural sector. You will be able to communicate effectively in person and in writing with a wide range of stakeholders across many media platforms. You will have direct experience of HTML and website content management systems and you will have a proven track record in effective relationship development with the press and media.

Download the job description, application form and recruitment pack here.

Programme Manager

Salary:             £25,825

Contract:          Full time fixed term to 31st March 2011(maternity cover)

Location:          Burnley, Lancashire

Closing date:    Noon on Monday 28th June 2010

Interview date:  Friday 9th July 2010

We are seeking an experienced Programme Manager to ensure the practical development and delivery of our programmes of work, including Creative Partnerships.

You will work with the Director of Programmes, other Programme Managers and key partners to oversee the development and delivery of the Curious Minds portfolio of programme activity, supporting effective long-term partnerships with schools, young people and their communities, creative organisations and other educational, regeneration and community organisations across the region.

Educated to degree level or equivalent, you will have a minimum of two years experience of working within educational and creative settings and will be an experienced project manager. You will be able to communicate effectively in person and in writing with a wide range of stakeholders. You will understand the importance of evaluation and reflective practice and you will have a proven track record in partnership working.

Download the job description, application form and recruitment pack here.

The application round for the Arts Award Coordinator and Administrator position is now closed. We are interviewing on the 14^th October and will keep you posted with how we get on.

Networking between approved Creative Practitioners and Schools from the Lancashire region is on at Accrington Academy on the 21^st October, invites have been sent out so get your RSVP’s back please!