SALLY FORT

As part of a project I'm overseeing in North Manchester / Rochdale, the school I'm working with is looking to recruit a creative practioner who can explore sensory creativity with primary aged special needs and mainstream children.

We're particularly interested in finding someone who can include visual art / design / craft in the work, and possibly include the school's outdoor spaces, potentially developing temporary additions to these spaces. Full details available to download below.

Deadline for applications: Friday 11th December

Creative practitioner wanted for a project I'm overseeing with two primary schools in Cheshire.

We're looking for someone interested in collaborating with teachers and children to develop children's thinking skills, working with a theme of The Great Outdoors, who can explore geography and cross-curricular ideas, and knows about, or is prepared to learn from a lead teacher about Independent Thinking Skill techniques.

Full details available to download below. The deadline is Thursday 10th December.

There will be some more of these briefs appearing over the next few days so keep looking.

The Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have launched a new set of resources for teachers.

A series of topics use the arts as a basis for exploring citizenship scenarios with pupils. There are  seven suggested topics, created to support schools entering this years's EHRC Young Brits at Art awards. However the resources are freely available for anyone to access and are relevant to anyone working with young people.

Each topic includes background ideas and information for teachers, an example scenario for teachers and pupils to explore together, and describes the work of a number of contemporary artists working in ways relevant to the topic outlined.

The topics include:
Your Rights - stemming from the United Nations Rights of a Child the topic explores the theme human rights and children's rights.
Homophobic Bullying - exploring homophobic bullying in schools and other places young people meet.
Class Divides Our Futures - asks about how children and young people become judged and channelled into certain schools, roles and careers based on perceptions about their social class.
Staying On - looks at implications for young people in terms of changes to the law about their education and training.
Wild Child - explores adult misconceptions compared to the realities of children's and young people's behaviour.
Creativity as Empowerment - how can we use creativity to remove barriers for people with disabilities?

Resources here
Awards information here

I was with a student on Tuesday who reminded me of that old phenomenom - when you learn a new word you suddenly see and hear it everywhere.

We’d just finished a TV Production masterclass by a wonderfully inspiring Producer called Jayne Brierley who I brought into a project I’m managing for a group of 14 year old Creative & Media Diploma students.

Emily’s word was ‘vox-pops’ which having freshly learned meant the popular voice, from Jayne, she saw again during break time in Heat magazine.

It happened to me too. I’ve started managing some action research projects with primary schools, taking on the role of part broker, part critical friend, part provocateur.

One of the teachers I’m working explained she wanted to use the Bloom’s Taxonomy model to explore children’s thinking skills and independence. I nodded for a while before working up courage to ask what she was talking about (because sometimes when you’re brought in as the external consultant people assume you know more than them, and look at you oddly when it turns out you just know differently, not more). Luckily my group of teachers are wonderful and sharing and not at all judgemental; she showed me some templates she had and so I learned about Blooms Taxonomies.

One week later I happened to read a friend’s blog, someone who is at the starting point of creating a new business which marries education and corporate social responsibility, over in Calgary.

As part of her work she’s taking a course which was linked to on her blog, so I clicked through and hey presto - there’s that Blooms Taxonomy stuff again.

As it turns out, on further exploration, I already knew about the Bloom’s Taxonomy model, I just didn’t know that was its name.

It happens to me fairly often that what I know from experience turns out to have a theory, theorists and framework already quietly backing up my own findings. There’s something in there about the balance of theory and practice - for another day…