Centre of Excellence in Creative Education

In collaboration with Take A Part, in 2019 High View embarked on an Arts Council funded project supporting other schools in Plymouth to develop the ability to create exciting and memorable learning opportunities through the arts, in a way that adds value across the curriculum and contributes to improvements in attainment and progress.

The Background:

High View School believes in excellent teaching and excellent creativity without compromise on outcomes. They believe talent is in everyone and when they started their RIO Creative Partnerships Programme in 2005 they took a different approach, using the resource to target vulnerable children and their hard to reach parents to share opportunity.

In 2006, High View started their long-term partnership with Take A Part and since then High View has worked on many successful, long term, curriculum embedded creative projects with Take A Part and independently.

Delivering Centre Of Excellence:

Centre Of Excellence In Creative Education actively supported schools to take a lead in embedding creativity in their curriculum and to share their learning with their communities and wider networks - creating a web of support, advocacy and links into schools for other arts, cultural, heritage and creative sectors to partner with on projects and programmes with mutual benefit.

The project ran an 18 month pilot (interrupted by the Covid 19 pandemic) artist and teacher in residence programme at High View School which enabled schools to observe and actively learn from their approaches to Creative Education. The programme consisted of exploring the models and methodologies High View and Take A Part have developed to establish and grow an arts ecology which is long term and more embedded, leading to High View to being the first school to offer specialist support in teacher training around Creative Education. Partner schools were supported to develop the understanding and skills to help better embedded creativity in their schools as legacy of the programme.

Centre of Excellence allowed High View and Take A Part to share our knowledge and expertise with others, while inviting into
schools artists, experts and teachers from other areas with an interest, specialisation or ambition around creative education; creating a climate of exploration and discovery and sharing learning in a peer-to-peer manner, that can be directly applied in school settings.

Alongside artists in residence programmes in each partner school High View also experimented with its approach to working with artists delivering across three new projects each with different ages, group sizes and lengths of time for the delivery. The learning from these projects enabled High View to reflect on, develop and hone how they themselves best work with artists.

As a National Lead Educator and National Teaching School, High View are able to platform discussions and lead conversation at a national level about the future of arts and culture in our curriculum and the wider role it has in terms of students' lives and communities.

This work positioned High View and Take A Part as National Leaders in Creative Education and an exemplar of how schools can
achieve excellent educational attainment with a creative approach. It also puts us in a unique place to advocate to Ofsted and DfE about the impact and role that widening the ways in which we teach can have on our country.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic the programme has had to be both incredibly flexible and responsive but continued to be delivered utilising different approaches both digital and in person. A symposium and webinar was held in spring 2022 as the culmination of, and reflection upon, the programme. This share back saw us taking both a National and more local view of our learning and that of Room 13 (Hareclive, Bristol), Gentle Radical and With Flying Colours. A manifesto for Creative Education and support for young people was created and a Plymouth approach was modelled too.

Take A Part and High View are continuing to explore this sharing across partner schools and are currently delivering Travelling Museum of Communities alongside our partner schools and are also supporting the delivery of family arts group model Crazy Glue with each of the partner schools too.