Culture Bank

Upcoming CPD sessions

Upcoming events are listed by date. We will update this page as sessions are confirmed throughout the year. To book, email culture@islington.gov.uk 

27th April 2021, 4:00-5:30pm - Thinking Differently: Race and Identity in the Classroom with Ali Eisa

Led by Ali Eisa, in this workshop, you’ll explore ways of using photography and visual material to support pupils to think differently about race, representation, identity, citizenship and human rights. Ali will introduce you to a selection of images from Autograph’s archive, which comprises over 5,000 diverse photographs made by renowned fine artists, social documentary and high street studio photographers, and including family albums and vernacular imagery. Together, you’ll consider the stories they tell about issues of race, identity, migration, citizenship and multiculturalism, belonging and community. You’ll explore how these images can be used to facilitate visual analysis and critical thinking for pupils, raise awareness of British history, including Empire, and as a stimulus for hands-on creative activities.

Ali Eisa is a contemporary artist, educator and public programmer. He is the Learning and Participation Manager at Autograph, where he works with schools, young people and marginalised groups. His practice spans over 10 years of collaborative and participatory work utilising sculpture, installation, performance, video and photography.

6th May 2021, 4:00-5:30pm - Supporting Creativity with Richard Phoenix

Led by artist Richard Phoenix, in this workshop, you’ll explore ways to embed young people-led practice into creative projects, particularly within Special Educational Needs and Disabilities settings.

Richard will provide starting points for art, music, video and podcasting activities that put young people at the centre. You’ll explore possibilities for online delivery and how these can translate to in-person contexts.

Drawing on his experience of co-creating projects with learning disabled young people, Richard will show how this approach can support young people’s creative agency and confidence to flourish.

Richard Phoenix is an artist who paints, draws, writes, makes music and learns about how these things can help people be together. Currently, he is a part of the Conditions Studio Programme in Croydon and he works for the learning disability arts organisation Heart n Soul as their Associate Artist.

Upcoming Cultural Lead Teacher meetings

Upcoming events for 2020-21 are framed predominantly around the 11 by 11 Partnership Project, detailed below:

Celebrating Our Creative Community

11 by 11 Partnership Project for Cultural Leads

For those who may not have been able to attend recent Cultural Lead meetings, we are pleased to be working with interested schools throughout Spring and Summer terms towards a week long schools festival to celebrate our creative community through curated resources and activity, existing and/or new, delivered online or face to face, developed through a 1:1 partnership between a school and a cultural organisation.

The festival partnerships will culminate in a week of celebration across Islington from Monday 5 – Friday 9 July 2021.

11 by 11 Festival 2021: Celebrating Our Creative Community is open to all Islington schools and 11 by 11 partners, and can incorporate online or in person activity in a scale which works for your setting.

Interested in taking part?

Schools who could not attend previous meetings but are interested in taking part can still sign up, provided they have a Cultural Lead Teacher (or can nominate one), and this teacher or another member of staff can attend the following planning and CPD sessions:

• 10 February: Planning for partnership working
• 17 March: Festival idea generating and sharing
• w/c 28th April: Cultural Lead General Update Meeting: 
• w/c 10 May: Capturing pupil voice and evaluation; what will be the legacy; disseminating key learning and resources

Please contact the Cultural Enrichment Team for more information or to sign up:

Contact us

Past meetings: Resources and Documents

Where available, we share the documents and resources from each session for use by those who attended and other school staff who may be interested.

Cutural Lead Twilight Session: 12 January 2021

The Spring Term welcome back session focused on updates and outlines relating to the upcoming partnership project for Cultural Leads.

You can access the PowerPoint here, which details upcoming dates for your diary and some useful links for school fundraising.

12 January Powerpoint

Music

Cutural Lead Twilight Session: Union Chapel

Key Stage

Curriculum

2019/20's second twilight for Cultural Lead Teachers took place Thursday 28 November 2019, at the Union Chapel. 

Please click the links below to download meeting documents:

• 28/11/2019 Twilight session PowerPoint presentation
• Music Education: State of the Nation Report
• The Benefits of Singing: Report

Theatre

Online Facilitation with Gaynor Smith on 26 November 2020

This session was open to school staff and learning staff from arts organisations. 

Gaynor is a youth worker, project manager and facilitator, who is passionate about diversity and youth engagement. She specialises in disability inclusion, youth participation, and theatre.

Drawing on her experience of devising and delivering creative workshops on Zoom throughout lockdown, Gaynor lead the group through online facilitation hints and tips, how to increase and maintain engagement, as well as a chance to share practice with peers.​

Online facilitation hints and tips (PDF)

View a video of the session, here:

Cultural Lead Twilight on 3 October 2019 at the National Youth Theatre

Key Stage

Curriculum

This session focused on using Drama in the classroom.

Download resources from the link below:

• Twilight Session: National Youth Theatre Powerpoint
• The Advantages of Drama Games

Drama And Wellbeing in the Classroom: Culture Bank CPD session 24 June 2020

This online meeting provided further practical stratgies for using Drama in the classroom to support wellbeing of children and young people. 

Download meeting resources below:

• Drama and Wellbeing session PowerPoint
• Classroom Games to Build Connection
• Classroom Activities: Brain Breaks
• Classroom Activities: Jigsaw - Building a Class Community
• Classroom Activity: Rolling Connections (from Tate's Year 3 project)

Dance

Create and Dance with the Royal Opera House

Key Stage

Curriculum

26 November and 3 December 2019

Led by the Royal Opera House, these two hands-on twilight sessions equipped Key Stage 1 teachers with the skills and confidence to empower their pupils to create dance pieces of their own, and inspire cross-curricular learning.

Session 1 provided a language and structure for creating movement, introducing ‘Building Blocks' of dance - i.e. actions, body, space, dynamics, relationships. Session 2 explored The Royal Ballet’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a stimulus for literacy and creative writing exercises, as well as other areas of the curriculum.

Activities are designed to develop children’s creativity, resilience, communication skills and many more transferable skills. These were interspersed with moments of discussion, lesson planning and an online tour of the learning platform.

Download resources

Science

Teacher Lab – a teaching resource for primary teachers focusing on the primary science curriculum

Key Stage

Curriculum

We’re pleased to share Barbican's brand-new teaching resource, full of activities which are designed to find creative ways to help pupils understand the primary science curriculum – from Early Years up to Year 6. The resource is the culmination of our Teacher Lab project, where a teacher was matched with an artist to re-imagine the curriculum and develop practical tools for learning through the arts. Activities in the resource, which focus on push and pull forces, have been created to meet the ability and learning needs of each primary year group, working alongside the National Curriculum and the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework.
 
Download the resources

Heritage and Museums

Visual Art, Crafts and Design

Artsmark Resources from A New Direction

Artsmark is the creative quality standard for schools, accredited by Arts Council England. It provides a clear framework for teachers to plan, develop and evaluate arts, culture and creativity across the curriculum and beyond. A New Direction supports London schools throughout their Artsmark journey, offering expert guidance, advice and training.

We are pleased to launch an Islington Artsmark Group in 2020-21, to support Islington teachers on their Artsmark journeys to have a chance to share and build their learning with teachers from other schools.

We can help connect you to advice and support on preparing and submitting your setting's Artsmark documentation, and invite teachers to contact us about their needs. 

Artsmark resources

Animate | Collaborate with Kaleidoworks on 9 December 2020

These workshops were open to Islington educators from secondary, primary and SEND settings. 

Led by artist-duo Kaleidoworks, these workshops explored playful ways in which animation processes can facilitate collaboration across social distancing and between bubbles. Kaleidoworks introduced both analogue and digital animation techniques, and how to mix the two Activities were suitable for the classroom and adaptable for remote learning and teaching..

Sessions explored the possibilities of instigating creativity through remote learning. Look at using Zoom as a creative tool and mobile phones as a digital image-making device, and learning how to share the results in exciting ways. The session looked at off-screen forms of engaging students from a distance, and how to build communication between those isolated. We discussed what benefits may come from these new ways of working, eg developing exciting ways to deliver homework, or build dialogue with people in other places.

View the video of the session here: 

Twilight Session - EYFS & Key Stage 1: Approaches to Multi-Sensory Teaching and Learning, with the October Gallery 

Key Stage

Curriculum

Led by specialist drama facilitator and storyteller Dani Bradstreet and October Gallery’s Georgie Fay, this session will introduce you to multi-sensory approaches to teaching and learning in EYFS and Key Stage 1. 

Through discussion and hands-on creative activities, you will explore:

• planning and delivering multi-sensory activities - including using role-play, tone of voice, fabric and textures, and sound and music
• facilitating creative responses to contemporary art, with a focus on printmaking 
• useful advice on easy-to-access affordable materials
• how to adapt activities for children of different ages and with different needs

The session will reference October Gallery's current exhibition Inside the Cordillera Occidental Portal II. The show features artists that explore patterns, forms and insights from cultures which historically originate from the western side of the Americas.

This CPD is part of 11 by 11 Culture Bank, delivered in partnership with Islington Council Cultural Enrichment and School Improvement teams. 

Learning Outcomes

• Increased confidence in using multi-sensory techniques in the classroom
• Gained skills and knowledge in planning and delivering multi-sensory activities
• Explored the benefits of multi-sensory teaching and learning
• Gained ideas for using contemporary art as a stimulus for learning
• Increased skills in printmaking

Date: ​Wednesday 29 January 2020, 16:30 - 18:30

Venue: October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, WC1N 3AL

Request a place

Film and Digital

Animate | Collaborate with Kaleidoworks

Key Stage

Curriculum

These workshops are open to Islington educators from secondary, primary and SEND settings. 

Led by artist-duo Kaleidoworks, in these workshops you’ll explore playful ways in which animation processes can facilitate collaboration across social distancing and between bubbles. Kaleidoworks will introduce to you both analogue and digital animation techniques, and how to mix the two.

Activities will be suitable for the classroom and adaptable for remote learning and teaching.

You can join one or both sessions. Workshops will take place via Zoom:

• Wednesday 18 November 2020, 4-5.30pm

This session will explore how teachers can still incorporate spontaneity, fun and creative risk-taking within the school environment. You will try out experimental animation processes that encourage collaboration between student bubbles and play with socially distant forms of interaction and making. Together we will discuss the current challenges facing teachers and think about imaginative problem solving around Covid-19 restrictions.  

Into Film: Raising Attainment in Literacy

Key Stage

Curriculum

In this practical CPD, Into Film will lead you through a series of creative, hands-on activities which use film to support literacy in upper KS2.

Each activity is designed to help build on a learner's comprehension, analytical and writing skills and includes an opportunity for curriculum-focused filmmaking and extended writing.

The session includes tried and tested practical activities such as Sound on/Vision off, Tell Me grids, Role on the Wall, Venn Diagrams and predictive writing.

Each participant will receive a free downloadable PowerPoint, which includes film clips, as well teaching resources and worksheets.

Date: Wednesday 16 October (4-6pm)

Venue: St Mary Magdalene Academy (Primary), 475 Liverpool Road

Request a place

Literature

Outdoor

Reports

Resources related to learning, creativity, wellbeing and education

• Arts Teaching Hours and Workforce
• Cultural Education for Governors
• Durham Commission Report on Creativity in Schools
• Durham Commission Report: Summary Recommendations
• Helping Children Cope With Change
• How Artsmark Can Support Recovery
• ImagineNation- The Case for Cultural Learning
• Recovery Curriculum - Loss and Life for our Children and Schools Post-pandemic
• Resilience Tips - Classroom Poster
• RSA- Cultural Learning Evidence Champions Handbook
• The Childhood Trust: Children in Lockdown - Report June 2020