Artsmark

Elaine Sutton, Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council

Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council is based in the Arts Council England, North West region. There are 81 schools in the area, 17% of which have achieved Artsmark awards.

Elaine Sutton
Creativity and Arts Consultant

Since being in post since September 2005, Elaine has noticed the impact of her work grow. With an average of three Artsmark applications per year since the award was first introduced, there was an increase to more than 10 applications in Round 7.

The local authority is part of the Arts Learning Consortium, a conglomeration of local authorities who have developed a nine-point arts entitlement framework that precludes Artsmark. 22 schools in the borough are signed up to the entitlement meaning they are laying foundations that will later allow them to apply for Artsmark.

Elaine supports schools by holding a training session in January called ‘An Introduction to Artsmark’. This is an open session for all schools and starts from the basics. Schools are shown examples of the application materials from the last round to see what’s involved in the application process. This session allows schools to establish if they are ready to apply or decide to build towards an application in the future. This year half the schools attending the session decided to make an application in the next round.

In September Elaine gets copies of the new application packs and makes appointments with those schools that showed an interest at the January session. In these sessions Elaine supports schools to overcome any problems with the application process. Elaine then makes another visit in 5-6 weeks to go through the completed form before it is submitted.