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   Creative Salford school promotes achievment in the arts
Poetry sessions, clay modelling, junk music workshops and fashion shows are just some of the arts activities undertaken by pupils at St Augustine’s C of E Primary in Pendlebury as part of its new creative curriculum being developed with funding from Greater Manchester Challenge The Greater Manchester Challenge is a three-year programme, which aims to implement and secure significant improvements in education for each of the 600,000 children and young people in Stockport, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan. St Augustine’s is taking a new approach to its Arts curriculum in collaboration with their Family of Schools. The Family of Schools is a programme which groups together schools from different local authorities across Greater Manchester with similar intakes and allows them to bid for funding to work together on a range of projects, with headteachers and staff all sharing a commitment to raising standards across the group. Other schools in the family include Mather Street Primary School in Failsworth, and Holy Rosary RC Primary School in Oldham. The group successfully put together a bid for £20,000 to pay for additional arts provision in the schools, including employing professional artists in residence and inviting special ‘guests’ such as Dan Blythe who wrote the Dr Who books to come in and talk to the students. The partnership also means that the schools can share experiences, recommending artists who have worked well with their own students and pooling resources and ideas. Recently St Augustine’s played host to two other family schools, Freehold Community Primary School and Blackshaw Lane Primary School, both from Oldham, to share their progress during Arts Week – a themed week off the usual timetable. Students showcased their talents with a special assembly to demonstrate projects they had been working on which included poetry, drama, dance and music as well as the visual arts. Pupils also had the chance to work with artist Vin Cahill, who took a masterclass in making clay animals and sculptures from nature to decorate the school’s garden, and play along with musician Cathie Higginson, who taught them the didgeridoo and encouraged them to make and play ‘junk’ instruments such as shakers, drums and guitars which the children improvised out of recycling materials. Clare Campbell, Headteacher at St Augustine’s, said, “The Arts week has been brilliant, and the children have taken great pride in their work. The project is part of our culture of achievement, and by improving the students’ access to a quality Arts curriculum we are seeing them make significant progress – as well as thoroughly enjoying themselves.” Matt Thompson from Freehold Community Primary School in Oldham adds, “We have really enjoyed coming here today to see the assembly and we are able to share ideas across the group of schools. It is also good to pool resources – it can be expensive to have an artist in residence in school for a week, but if another school in the family has used them then we can be sure that they work well with the children and that we are getting value for money. “ Athena Barrell from Year 5 at St Augustine’s said, “The Arts week has been a really nice change. We have learned that art is not just drawing, but also poetry, music and dance and fashion. We’ve had lots of artists in and everyone has been really excited. We also had a competition where we made mini tiles for a mosaic then had to draw a picture of what the mosaic would be like. Vin Cahill is going to pick a winner and then we are going to make a picture to go at the back of the stage.” Sam Calderdale enjoyed making Claude Monet pictures with pastels and making the clay models with Vin Cahill, and Georgia Brooks’ favourite activity was the fashion show. She says, “We could pick out our own clothes and then when the music comes on you walk in and show off the outfits. We also did poetry – we read The Highwayman and then made a collage of him.” Their classmate Molly Lockett has been so inspired by Arts week that she is contemplating becoming an artist. She says, “I loved making the clay tiles and working with plants and flowers to make things to go on display in the garden. I think I would like to do this for a living.” Clare Campbell is delighted with the progress of the school family. She says, “We aim to develop all our staff and students by building our strengths in the Arts and taking ownership of the curriculum, making it distinctive to our family of schools. Networking and collaboration are a powerful force and we recognise the wealth of expertise with in our schools and aim to share existing good practice and build upon this with the use of specialist Arts practitioners.” Photo: Sophie Connolly of St Augustine's C of E Primary school. Due to problems with spam only SalfordOnline members can now leave comments. Becoming a member of SalfordOnline only takes a minute, just hit the red Join Us button at the top right hand side of the page to create your Personal account. Got a news story? Need help with publicity for an event in Salford? Send it to newsdesk@salfordonline.com or call the SalfordOnline newsdesk on 0161 789 5377. |
