News8th July 2024

New pilot in Hastings works to transform arts education for thousands of children 

Arts festival sees 60 events in July, the culmination of a year-long project that has driven new approaches to arts education in the community.

The first week of July saw the delivery of Ark’s first arts festival – Where I Live and Learn (WILL)– in schools across Hastings. The festival marked the end of the first full year of a new arts programme, supported by major arts and education funder the Clore Duffield Foundation. The pilot, which will run for another three years and expand into other regions across England, is designed to develop a new approach to arts education. We want to work out how school trusts can use their scale and strategic oversight to connect with local, regional and national arts organisations in meaningful ways.  

This year’s festival featured diverse events, including an outdoor play and sensory sessions with local artist India Harvey, an installation of artwork in Ark Little Ridge’s forest school, professional poetry and dance performances and craft and clay workshops for families.  We were delighted to be joined by Dame Vivien Duffield and Kate Bellamy of the Clore Duffield Foundation, who, alongside Tina Alexandrou (Chair), Lucy Heller (Ark CEO) and other senior colleagues, had the chance to see children and teachers in action. 

The festival week concluded with some special professional development opportunities for Ark teachers at the Royal Opera House and the Tate. Through these sessions, staff were invited to hone their creative skills, develop new approaches, and explore best practice, all with the aim of enriching their classrooms through arts-based teaching. 

A national decline in Arts education 

This is a much-needed intervention. The recent Cultural Learning Alliance report painted a stark picture. Since 2011, teaching hours for Arts subjects have fallen by 21 percent. We know this disproportionately affects the most disadvantaged communities because children living in the richest areas in the country are twice as likely to engage in Performing Arts outside of school than their peers in the most deprived areas.  

The programme has sought to address this decline in three key ways:  

• Providing training for teachers – especially at primary – to grow their confidence in teaching art, dance, drama and music.  

• Building links between schools and arts organisations at a local, regional and national level to provide creative activities for pupils and teachers.  

• Providing opportunities for performance for children of all ages, stages and abilities.   

There have been some big achievements in this first year.  

• Over 1,000 hours of training have been provided to over 100 teachers in the last nine months.  

• Arts organisations including Tate, the Royal Opera House, National Theatre, Punchdrunk Enrichment, an organisation that grew out of the world’s leading immersive theatre company, Apples and Snakes, Into Film, South East Dance, art gallery Hastings Contemporary and Radiator Arts have all provided educational opportunities to these schools.  

• Over 60 activities ran across Hastings in July, providing over 2,400 hours of arts engagement for pupils.  

Kate Bellamy, Director of the Clore Duffield Foundation said: 

“An excellent arts education is crucial for every child to thrive but it is also essential for the health of our creative industries to thrive. The Foundation has spent the past twenty years supporting cultural institutions to create Clore Learning Spaces for arts education. But not all schools and families can easily access these. We hope this project with Ark Schools will provide a model for how multi academy trusts can develop inspiring arts education programmes, ensuring all their pupils benefit.” 

Margaret O’Shea, Head of Creative and Extended Curriculum at Ark said: 

“We are delighted with the early results of this project so far. We have long held that all our students should have the opportunity to be creative and to express themselves boldly as the arts so powerfully allow. This project is an exciting opportunity to take a genuinely new approach for Ark. Connecting schools with arts organisations is not a new idea, but we are going to these organisations and asking them to shift to the school’s perspective and asking them to find ways to bring their creativity – whether it is theatre, dance, music or the visual arts – into the classroom.”