Creative Partnerships brings creative professionals – such as artists, architects and multimedia developers – into schools across England to help raise young people’s aspirations.
Destino - a collaboration between Sadler's Wells and Dance United. Sadler's Wells, March 2009, Andreas Knapp
In 2002 we launched Creative Partnerships, the Government’s flagship creative learning programme. Since then, it has worked intensively with more than 2,700 schools, with a further 10,000 involved. More than 915,000 young people have taken part in over 14,000 sessions.
Creative Partnerships brings creative professionals – such as artists, architects and multimedia developers – into schools across England to help raise young people’s aspirations. They develop the skills young people need to perform well not only in exams and extra-curricular activities, but also in the workplace and wider society.
In April 2009, we demerged Creative Partnerships, and set up a new organisation, Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) to run the programme. CCE will be our largest regularly funded organisation. It will invest more than £100 million to generate transformational cultural and creative programmes for children and young people across England between 2009 and 2011.
These include the Creative Partnerships programme and Find Your Talent, a £25 million pilot that gives children and young people the chance to try out different cultural and creative activities. CCE also works with other organisations to develop exciting events such as Shine Week, an annual celebration of young people’s talent.
Feedback from pupils, parents, schools and from the schools inspectors at Ofsted shows that Creative Partnerships projects have very positive results. For example, seven out of 10 secondary head teachers say Creative Partnerships improves pupil behaviour in their school.
Matthew Milburn, Head of Kingstone School in Barnsley, says Creative Partnerships has made a dramatic difference to his school, particularly in helping to train teachers. ‘Artist educators came into school and worked alongside teachers to develop a more active approach to teaching and learning for children at Key Stage 3 – the first three years at secondary school. This has helped to strengthen relationships within the school.’
He adds that teachers are learning to present lessons in a way that meets the needs and interests of their pupils, and the children now see their teachers more as collaborators in learning. There have also been ‘incalculable’ benefits for the staff, he says, and the creative professionals also benefit; working with young people enriches their own creative practices.
Visit the website at www.creative-partnerships.com
