Page 177 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book

• Ninety-four per cent cite arts subjects and experiences as having a positive impact on the
overall engagement of children and young people.
• Eighty-seven per cent recognise the impact of arts and cultural learning on overall school
improvement.

All the young people interviewed for the ACE research talked with visible enthusiasm and pride
about their schools’ arts provision. Many talked about how engagement with arts subjects had
increased their enjoyment of school, and staff recognised that arts experiences provided some of
the strongest and happiest memories of young people’s time at school.

This correlates with findings from last year’s Time to Listen study, which analysed more than
6,000 responses from young people in schools across England. When asked what they value
about arts and creative subjects in their schools, many talked about the value of arts subjects as
an outlet for pressure and a means of helping them to navigate and process some of the difficult
emotions they experience as teenagers (TALE, 2018).
Many schools understand that the arts have a unique role to play in young lives. As subjects and
experiences, they encourage us to think deeply about what it is to be human. The fact that they
are interpretive means that there is rarely a right or wrong answer – they encourage us to think
for ourselves and hone key life and interpersonal skills including creative and critical thinking.
They can foster empathy and help us to develop tolerance by showing us new ways of seeing
ourselves, others and the world around us.
Barbican Guildhall and the RSC want to create a platform through which school leadership teams
who exemplify these beliefs can share their knowledge and experience. This aim has led us to
create a joint conference entitled Towards a Creative Curriculum, taking place in January.

Ofsted’s new EIF is encouraging. Those of us who believe that arts and cultural learning should
be part of every child’s education hope it can present an opportunity for embedding work that
engages and inspires young people and takes us towards a future where arts and cultural
learning are present in every school and available to every child.

• Jacqui O’Hanlon is director of education at the Royal Shakespeare Company and
Jenny Mollica is director of creative learning for the Barbican and Guildhall School
of Music & Drama.

Towards a Creative Curriculum

The Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning team and RSC Education have joined forces to create
a conference series that celebrates the role that arts subjects and experiences can play in
developing a creative curriculum. The conference is framed around the new Ofsted criteria to
demonstrate how clearly arts subjects can contribute to it.
It will include case studies of schools where the arts have played a significant role in whole
school improvement and development, as well as in building the cultural capital of their pupils.
Taking place on Friday, January 10, the event is suitable for those working with young people
from key stage 2 and 3 and costs £90 (an early bird rate of £65 is available until October 31).
The event is supported by the Kusuma Trust UK.
For details, visit www.rsc.org.uk/education/teacher-professional-development/towards-a-creative-
curriculum
Further information & research

• School workforce in England: November 2018, DfE, June 2019: http://bit.ly/2kIjBsR
• Education Inspection Framework (final documents), Ofsted, May
2019: www.gov.uk/government/collections/education-inspection-framework