Project title
Description of initiative
Theatres, cinemas, operas, art galleries, museums, community arts groups have been forced to close at short notice as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools were shut to most students, some have fully re-opened in Wales, many across Europe have a mixed approach with some year groups in full time and others a mix of F2F/online learning. This situation has left many young people stressed/concerned about their current and future lives. Many students have missed school for friendship and support from school staff and are now worried about catching up on their education. This has impacted negatively on their emotional wellbeing. This project is a partnership of 6 schools, 4 creative arts experts and 2 education support organisations carrying out the following activities:
- Creative Arts methodology within schools as one of the support mechanisms to improve students’ health & emotional wellbeing. This will be developed into an in-depth Research based impact evaluation review carried out with support from an independent researcher to produce a robust & dynamic impact evaluation report to drive policy development with policy influencers.
- Online workshops/modules developed by creative arts experts to upskill teaching professionals and stored as a digital repository on open access sites. A toolkit of resources/lessons/activities produced by teaching staff developed after attending the online modules to develop and deliver high quality creative arts lessons/activities in schools. The majority of students targeted are learning in a bilingual environment and to support their language acquisition skills we will create between teaching professionals, students and creative arts experts a LEXICON of EMOTIONAL WELLBEING, which will be one of the unique features of this project. This will be developed into a progression route strategy for 3–19-year-olds as part of each school’s Health & Wellbeing curriculum/policy.
Further information on the initiative
Themes: Culture and...
Keywords
Target group
Cultural field
Budget
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Results, benefits, impact and lessons learnt
Expected results/impact include:
- Students have the necessary vocabulary in their language of learning to express themselves confidently about their feelings, emotions and problems that have built up within themselves during the pandemic.
- Students have gained confidence in a range of creative/cultural/expressive arts skills to communicate how they feel about the impact of Covid-19 on themselves, their families, and friends.
- School staff are comfortable and confident in using a range of creative, cultural and expressive arts- based methods to develop their own repertoire of approaches to linguistic and emotional support.
- Schools have mechanism/vocabulary and progression route for talking about feelings from foundation phase into transition years of secondary school and beyond.
Longer-term benefits are anticipated as follows:
- Policy changes within schools to develop an emotional wellbeing progression route for talking about feelings from foundation phase into transition years of secondary school and beyond.
- Higher profile on the importance of CREATIVE ARTS and EXPRESSIVE ARTS across the curriculum
- Better emotional wellbeing resilience for schools, their students and teaching staff
- Greater engagement between school communities and local creative arts community.