Aims & Background
Working with parents and children to access their cultural entitlement
Our Aims are:
- To genuinely create opportunities in order that our communities may effectively engage with the arts.
- To educate our families for the future – inspiring confidence and developing lifelong learning skills (family learning)
- To spread the message of the importance of creative learning and cultural entitlement in other inner city schools
Jubilee and Lauriston Primary schools, in Hackney, both have a rich history of involvement with the arts and make regular visits to cultural places of interest throughout the year. However, this rarely filters through to the larger school communities – despite London being a fabulous centre of arts from a wide cultural heritage.
Are our families really making the most out of the cultural entitlement? If this isn’t the case, why isn’t it? Is it price? Fear? Loathing? Time? Or do people believe that the ‘Arts’ are just not for them?
It is vital for our schools to continue moving forward developing an arts based curriculum and engaging all parents/carers with the amazing cultural opportunities that London has to offer.
With this in mind we decided to develop a programme of workshops and visits that would engage the parent and child – working together to explore different areas of the arts enabling them to develop confidence in accessing arts opportunities in the capital in a safe and controlled atmosphere.
These workshops will be in 5 areas of cultural activity: Dance, Museums, Art Galleries, Music and Film – each workshops and visit will be followed by plenary session to see how the process has worked (with a suggested ‘homework’ activity/visit). The whole process will hopefully encourage a different set of parents/carer to access both the school and the cultural activities that London has to offer. If a child works with a member of their family exploring the processes involved in making visits they will hopefully grow to feel more comfortable about engaging with the arts developing a stronger lifelong interest in the diverse cultural areas that London, and the rest of the country, have to offer.
These workshops have given us the opportunity to make links with cultural centres all over London supporting us with our workshops and encouraging them to do more work within schools as well as extending the professional development of our own staff.
By working in partnership with Eelyn Lee, a documentary maker, we hope to create a film that will become a learning tool – a resource to that will help to spread the practice.
CREATIVE ACTIVITY IS THE GREAT HAPPINESS AND GREAT PROOF OF BEING ALIVE
Nick Cannon
