We want our Arts curriculum to offer numerous benefits to our pupils. These include creative expression, teamwork, critical thinking, confidence and self esteem. The ultimate goal is procedural knowledge through making music, dancing, playing instruments, choreography and singing.
Listen below to Audrey Caldwell, Curriculum Director of Performing Arts, and many other colleagues across the Trust to find out more about how we inspire our pupils to be creative and perform within the schools and with peers across Meridian Trust.
Meridian Trust Arts Showcase – how it comes together
The Meridian Trust Arts Showcase is a highlight of the calendar year for our Arts department. Hundreds of pupils are involved in the Hub events building up to the showcase in July. Watch the video to find out from Audrey Caldwell about how it’s all put together.
The pupil experience and wider offer in our Arts curriculum
In this video Audrey Caldwell speaks about the pupil experience with the arts curriculum. Critical thinking, emotional development, creative expression and teamwork are all developed through song, dance, music, theatre and acting.
We spoke to colleagues from Meridian Trust to highlight the wider curriculum offer within our Arts. This includes the Meridian Trust Jazz Orchestra, which debuted at the Meridian Trust Arts Showcase.
Focus on our Primary school Art curriculum
“It is our aim that by the time every child leaves primary school they feel as if they have an area of the visual arts that is relevant and engaging to them – that might be through drawing, making, designing, or talking about art. We need to create as many different opportunities as possible to find those things that strike a chord with them.”
Amy Hilton, Meridian Trust’s primary Art subject lead and a Year 6 teacher at Histon & Impington Brook Primary School (where she has been Art subject lead for eight years), has overseen a major transformation of the curriculum in the past 12 months. Not only has the Trust introduced a new AccessArt curriculum, which came out in May 2022, it has significantly increased the allocation of time dedicated to Art.
“As a Trust we value and are committed to developing and nurturing children’s creativity through the Arts, and we wanted this to be reflected in its prominence in the timetable,” Amy (pictured below) explained. “We now have Art once a week for 40 minutes to one hour and teach a unit/pathway each half-term. The curriculum covers a range of disciplines, techniques, materials and approaches, but we have become less focused on a final outcome and more focused on the creative journey that the children take. It is about giving children the freedom to express themselves, knowing that not everything in Art needs to look the same, and there is no right or wrong approach which they find empowering.”
Amy, who studied a Fine Art degree at Bishop Grosseteste University before training to teach and taking up her first teaching position at the then Histon & Impington Junior School 22 years ago, outlined how the Trust’s new curriculum seeks to “balance substantive knowledge with implicit/experiential knowledge, developing and nurturing traits in the children as learners which will help them with whichever path their learning takes”. This ethos, and the confidence and self-esteem it is proving to build, is also designed to “spill over into other subjects”.
She said: “We looked at the AccessArt curriculum and it is broad, rich, contemporary and diverse, offering a more exploratory approach and exposure to a wider range of different artists and giving some context behind the art when or why art was made. Therefore, we decided to go with using most of the suggested plans from this curriculum, although we have kept some of the units that we were using previously, particularly where they make purposeful links with other subjects across the curriculum. It has been really successful where we have made really meaningful connections across the broader curriculum, e.g. our Year 5/6 Fashion Design pathway for Art which we taught alongside the History Fashion unit, Year 5/6 Shadow Puppet pathway that has linked to the Science on Light, and the Year 3/4 Gestural Drawing with Charcoal pathway aligned to History on Stone Age.”
Drawing and sketchbook pathways “underpin everything”, Amy revealed, and learning tasks linked to these are also woven through other units.
“Each unit begins with one of the ‘Talking Points’, where we look at an artist or artists as a starting point for conversation,” she said. “These include questions to consider and the teachers and children use their sketchbooks to make visual notes. Sketchbooks are integral to the teaching of Art and they are used in all year groups, including Reception. We encourage the children to be creative with their sketchbooks, to own them. They are theirs, not ours. We use them to share work and have discussions with each other about their creative growth. It is lovely to look back through them and see how far they have come, they really do tell a story. The children are very proud of these and each sketchbook is unique to the individual child.
“Teachers also have their own sketchbooks and a real emphasis is put on modelling and working alongside children; joining them with their discoveries and difficulties. Teachers are not afraid to be seen to be learning alongside the children. In fact, this often provides a very positive and powerful role model for children.”
The primary Art curriculum now offers traditional skills balanced with experimental work; small-scale work balanced with large-scale work; quiet reflective study balanced with active, dynamic work; individual work balanced with group work; two-dimensional work balanced with three-dimensional work; and a study of historical “great” artists (as stated in the National Curriculum) balanced with contemporary artists.
Amy highlighted the Trust’s belief that “high-quality practice in the early years will develop children’s interest and imagination”. She added: “Our EYFS teachers have been exploring the AccessArt resources for EYFS settings and we are developing this further for September. We need these foundations to be creative and engaging for Art to be successful in the future. Art is compulsory for pupils in Key Stage 1, 2 and 3. For those who choose to continue with their Art education at Key Stage 4 and 5, it may be their only route into future training and work opportunities within the creative industry. There have been declines in the quantity of art education provided to pupils in primary and secondary.”
As well as her school/Trust curriculum role, Amy lends her expertise further as the Art subject lead on the CTSN SCITT programme in Cambridge and West Suffolk and as Art tutor for the primary PGCE programme at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. “It is so important that we share our experiences within and beyond the Trust so we are confident to deliver the curriculum,” she said. “Over the next 12-18 months we will develop a Trust-wide CPD programme so we are all clear on the key values that underpin our Art curriculum, and get a good professional dialogue going with other subject leaders on the best arts education possible. For the children this is about giving them a wide range of opportunities, which will continue to include local, regional and national competitions.”
Arts specialism within our Primary Arts
A newly-appointed Arts Specialist teacher at West Town Primary Academy is seeking to share her nationally-recognised expertise in dance, as part of a wider commitment to delivering a diverse and creative cultural education for pupils.
Rachel Howes, pictured below, who joined the Peterborough-based school after Easter, has written dance education resources for ZooNation, including Message in a Bottle, Some Like It Hip Hop and The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Formerly a lead dance teacher at a secondary school, which brought about her initial introduction to ZooNation when it moved from AQA to B-Tech qualification, Rachel has subsequently been commissioned to produce educational content for Sadler’s Wells Theatre and Universal Dance.
“I started dancing very young, it came very naturally to me, and it was a chance to express myself,” recalled Rachel, who went to study a degree in Professional Dance and Musical Theatre at Urdang. “When I was then diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia during my teens, my tutors said that dance really improved me.
“Generally I have always been interested in how to make the arts more accessible to children, and a good example of this is the work I have done with Saddlers Wells and Islington Council on their 11 by 11 pledge, ensuring all children and young people attending a school in Islington have 11 outstanding cultural experiences by Year 11. Dance is an important aspect of this. Every child has something they are naturally better at, and that they find more difficult, and my message is there is nothing wrong with ‘I can’t yet’.
Rachel is currently developing a Dance Learning Journey within the PE Curriculum at West Town Primary Academy, which will eventually see every group working with her half-termly. “We are teaching basic dance upwards, using different genres of music and dance, and building on technique from Year 4,” Rachel explained. “In Year 1, we will provide an introduction to dance via storytelling in The Snail and the Whale, in Year 2 we will look at The Little Match Girl, and then in Year 3 we will explore The Lion King Musical and costume.
“In Year 4, we will move on to contemporary dance, looking at Broken – Motionhouse, then in Year 5 we will introduce jazz dance and technique from Stomp The Musical, and finally street dance in Year 6 through Some Like It Hip Hop and Newsies The Musical. Throughout the Dance Learning Journey there are cross-curricular links to Art, English, Geography, PSHE, RE and Science. During the summer term, we have been testing this with Years 5 and 6.” As part of this pilot, Year 5 and 6 West Town Primary Academy children have also performed Stomp The Musical at the Meridian Trust Arts Festival earlier this month, with other pupils taking on back-stage roles including costume design.
Meridian Trust’s overarching Arts curriculum has also impressed Rachel. “The children absolutely love it,” she said. “There are so many opportunities to experience arts, and not just in arts subjects either, which also benefit SEND and EAL children in culturally diverse community of West Town. There is a lot more cohesion and collaboration through the Trust curriculum. We want the arts to be as valued as core subjects, and for teachers and pupils to see the benefits at West Town and other schools.”
Meanwhile, Rachel is currently training as a Cultural Champion with the Royal Opera House to further embed West Town Primary Academy’s passion for the arts and cultural experiences.
