Partners: Blaze (Curious Minds), Lancaster City Council, Mossgate Primary School Heysham, Quernmore Primary School, The Tate, Liverpool, The Grundy, Blackpool.
This creative empowerment programme was held over an academic year, facilitating a ‘whole school’ approach to working with artists, embedding creative thinking into the curriculum for both pupils and teaching staff.
Building on our strong relationships from previous engagement work with Mossgate and Quernmore Primary Schools; we worked closely with teaching staff to devise an inspirational one-year programme that could cascade across classrooms by teaching the power of the imagination and the possibilities this can lead to.
The programme involved a co-production approach where teachers received professional development training and were encouraged to focus on and immerse themselves in the creative process and educational possibilities rather than the final outputs.
The project began and concluded at the Gallery at The Storey, starting with an exploration of our exhibition celebrating 20 years of Green Close: Bringing It All Back Home. This was followed by workshops at The Tate in Liverpool, The Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool and within schools. A stunning culmination exhibition was held in June 2016, which showcased visual artwork created during the year but also the empowering nature of art in terms of increasing confidence communication and collaboration, linguistic ability and learning new skills.