St Marylebone has won a very exciting bid to lead the Arts Council’s Creativity Collaborative for London!
In June this year, schools were invited to submit a bid to lead one of eight possible Creativity Collaboratives, spread out across the country, ensuring geographical and socio-economic reach. St Marylebone is one of the eight successful schools nationally, following a rigorous application process in which we demonstrated our excellent record in creativity across the curriculum, development of teachers, successful outreach and collaboration, and overall vision for the promotion of creativity in education. £2,780,000 has been committed nationally to this three-year pilot by the Arts Council’s National Lottery Project Grants programme and Freelands Foundation. Our bid has secured approximately £320,000 of the available funding.
St Marylebone’s outstanding Performing and Visual Arts offer certainly makes a huge contribution to this – and this win was also based on how creativity plays a vital role in learning in all subjects and beyond the curriculum at our School. We know that creativity is as important in the Science lab as in the Dance studio, as vital in Geography as in Music. This aligns with the vision of the Arts Council and Durham Commission.
Winning this bid means St Marylebone will lead a network of schools across London to develop teaching for creativity, focussing on school culture, values and shared language. The London Creativity Collaborative network will include schools across all phases, including special education and 6th Form, and will tackle social and economic disadvantage, where creativity is needed most. The following partner organisations will enhance the work in schools:
- National Theatre
- V&A Museum
- John Knowles Ritchie (JKR) – global design and branding agency
- A New Direction
Following St Marylebone’s success as a Teaching School and region-wide leadership as a Maths Hub, to now become a Creativity Collaborative is an exciting and fitting next step in St Marylebone’s creative and collaborative growth.
The Creativity Collaboratives programme emerged from the Durham Commission on Creativity and Education, a joint research collaboration between Durham University and Arts Council England, convened to look at the role creativity should play in the education of young people.
Arts Council England
Read some more about the project here.
