A blog about Inspiration, Inclusion and Behaviour management in Schools including a segment from BBC One's The One Show on Mon 10th Feb featuring a number of teachers, school leaders and footage from the recent Lose the Booths conference in Leeds.
2019 was an amazing year for us.
On Jan 1st we gave ourselves 30 days to arrange an #ARTCONNECTS19 Festival Week of Creative Schools, Work and Lives.
It was amazing as you can see in the 2 minute film in this blog.
In 2020 we’re reaching out of education’s echo chambers and connecting with business and society.
To #COLLABORATE20
Read all about it
Exactly five years ago, I had packed the car with luggage and family and we set out for a New Year’s Eve break in god’s own county, Cornwall.
We got halfway to the end of the road before the suspension warning light went on and the car went into ‘safe’ mode not allowing it to be driven at more than 5 mph to the local garage.
So we limped home for a quiet night and weekend in.
I opened a mysterious package I’d received before Christmas but not opened.
Now look what it’s inspired me to do.
FREE MONEY
We get great feedback for the sessions we run in schools and keep hearing from school communities - parents, teachers and other creative carers who would love to get us in but simply can’t afford it.
At £300 for one of our half day sampler sessions or £750 for a full on STEAM Co. Day with 20 or so activities we’re told we aren’t expensive but it still adds up.
Well here’s an idea…
As part of their 25th Celebrations, The National Lottery have announced a grant fund offering grants of up to £1,000 to just about anyone with an idea to run a day to bring their community together.
You don’t have to be a charity or an organisation to get the money, just get two people together (who aren’t related) and apply. Or do it through your organisation like the scouts, a footy club or model railway society.
It takes 10 minutes tops - your name and details, a short description of the idea you have an a few lines saying what you’ll spend the money on. Done. Sorted. They’ll then enter you into the draw and let you know pretty soon if you’ve won or not.
The Lottery you don’t have to pay to enter.
WHAT WILL YOU DO?
You could run a street party
Or a family fun day like the one we helped run below at Mandale Mill Primary.
We’ll come up and do a talk, set up the kit to run the activities and fire off a real dynamite rocket.
DEADLINE MIDDAY FRI 6th DEC
After 18 months or so the Durham Commission on Creativity and Education has published it's findings and recommendations.
A valued document it pulls together much established thinking and a core theme that has underpinned our work form day one… To Collaborate for Creativity.
Here we present our evidence informed work, include a handy transcript of Sir Nicholas Serota presenting the report on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme and invite you to start walking the talk, right now, in Liverpool 4-9 November at #OURART19 -a week of events across the city and in a school community near you.
Be part of it, with your art.
The story of the battle for our, your their art and a look at some of the forces and factors that might be behind the creativity crisis brewing on our schools and that might impact our work and lives.
And how The Guardian seem to have made a film, just for us, you and them.
It’s the long read The Guardian didn’t publish but we hope it will make you want to #CollaborateForCreativity.
And talk about it.
And walk the talk.
As many creative people and companies already have
As part of our year-long grass roots, co-created #ARTCONNECTS19 Festival of Creative Schools, Work and Lives, we chose the same day as Elton John to launch a major export story for the UK.
It could be said that one of the most contentious and certainly most pressured subjects in our schools, yet one of the most critical to our country, is that of creativity and the arts with much reported in the press of late around the decline in GCSE students and now a fall off in applications to teach art and DT.
Are we facing a Creativity Crisis? Why would HRH Prince Charles get involved? And what did the schools minister say and do?
Watch this space as this develops, but we’re very excited to see a Primary School redesign their whole curriculum around STEAM pedagogy and even create their own STEAM Co. logo.
Wow - well what a couple of weeks.
How a news report on the decline in arts education on the BBC echoed work we'd done around community engagement in schools in Luton and Liverpool and led to a new hashtag.
Book launched with contributions by a wide range of educators and a parent. Get it here.
Movement of educational like-minds, kicked off in Leeds. Check it out here.
Great day and quite exciting. Everyone took a pledge. This was ours.
Watch that and this space... we will hopefully write it up soon!
In fact, watch this film of Lord Jom Wright on what he wants politivians to do about educaiton.
The Telegraph Festival of Education at Wellington College attracts an enviable line up of speakers from across the spectrum of educational thinking across two days 22/23 June.
We’re delighted to announce a fringe screening/discussion evening alongside it this year on Thursday 22nd June in a local school community to celebrate and discuss creativity in education, business and society.
A piece on the Radio 4's flagship show Front Row caught our ear a few weeks ago... sculpture... submarines made of old tyres... steam locomotives made of bricks... industry... engineering... stories of childhood growing up among factories, coal mines, docks... 20 tons of newspapers?
How a quiet little lad in a year 3 class I worked with in a challenged primary school in our 'Rocket Kids' session inspired an unplugged TEDx talk I did with Tom Morley.
How a bit of Blue Sky Thinking and a blog by the government minister responsible for creative industries and the digital economy, inspired some doing - a regional event to launch STEAM Co. across Shropshire.
An event to celebrate creativity and how it can engage children, innovate business and connect communities as we move into the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution' where creativity and tech literacy will be essential for our children to thrive.
And what better venue for the event than the birthplace of the first industrial revolution, the inspiring Enginuity centre in Coalbrookdale in the shadow of the Ironbridge itself.
The event will be relevant for carers like parents, teachers, creatives, engineers and employers.
It will aim to inspire these communities to go away and run STEAM Co. Days in Primary schools across the county and beyond.
Do see our launch trailer film,
We really enjoyed the eagerly anticipated Christmas Lectures, presented on the BBC from the Royal Institution for 20 years now.
They were particularly special for us at STEAM Co, coming from the very stage that we relaunched STEAM Co. on 3 years ago and focusing on energy and electricity, a large part of our science work with STEAM Co. especially this year as we will be working with schools and businesses in the Hull and Bridlington area, the centre of the UK's renewables industry which is calling out for STEAM skills.
A write up of BT's launch of their #TechLiteracy initiative and research that commissioned with Ipsos Mori which showed that 78% of teachers believe that #TechLiteracy is vital for the people’s futures.
lso a look at the role 'grown ups' and children alike can play in educating and supporting their school communities and beyond through initiatives like Digital Leaders.
After running our 'Rocket Kids' STEAM Co. Sampler show around the UK based on on Homer Hickam's best selling book and film, teachers kept saying something to us: that their children were being engaged and reconnecting with the curriculum.
But then someone else told us that engagement isn't learning . Is it?
A most inspiring evening with Grayson Perry at St Martin's discussing gender and the power of art to connect.
Art means many things to many people and it's a key ingredient in the STEAM acronym for us, being key to the creativity we feel is key to inspiring our children as well as innovating business and connecting communities.
We felt the need to declare our love for art and its power to connect, so we looked for other @People4Art