Help for talented creative graduates

On 8 March the Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Culture Minister Margaret Hodge announced a two-year grants programme to provide at least 40 internships with established arts companies for graduates from deprived backgrounds.

For more information

Early Years Event in Wolverhampton 19.3.2010

A-level Summer Exhibition Online Royal Academy-deadline approaching! 15.March for Schools

The student submission process is now open! This is the only online exhibition in the UK for A-level students. It is open to all students at schools and colleges in the UK who are currently studying A levels, Higher/Advanced Higher or IB.The exhibition will be judged from a shortlist by a panel including Royal Academician and sculptor Richard Wilson, Royal Academy curator Adrian Locke and Royal Academy Schools student Rachael Champion.
The exhibition is live on this website from 14 June to 22 August 2010, showing at the same time as the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the world’s largest open-submission contemporary art show. In 2009, over 1,000 artworks were submitted from schools across the UK.


http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/education/a-level-summer-exhibition-online/

Why Making Matters

Why making matters

AnnMarie Thomas gave a short talk at TED this year on Why Making Matters
Please see link here:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/03/why_making_matters.html

Cambridge Science Festival, 8 - 21 March 2010

Join us for the UK's largest free science festival, exploring subjects from astronomy to zoology, with demonstrations, hands on experiments, talks from leading scientists, and visits to University and partner facilities. Over 150 events will give families, adults and children of all ages two weeks of hands on science and insight into the University’s cutting edge research. Many of the hands on activities, demonstrations and children’s lectures will take place on our family fun days on Saturday 13 and 20 March.

Highlights for adults:

• Investigate the science of survival with Helen Keen (Channel 4 New Comedy Writing Award Winner) in as she tells of the frozen world of early Arctic exploration and her own humid family history 
• Join specialist science guides on the Daring Diversity walking tour to discover why Newton poked a needle in his eye and why Darwin’s nickname was ‘Gas’ 
• Discover the science of humour as Psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman describes his year-long search for the world’s funniest joke

Highlights for families:

• Hands on activities in Colourful Creatures at the Museum of Zoology
• Learn what happens when lasers and jam doughnuts collide with Dr Evil
• Discover the world of waves, gases and chemistry with The Naked Scientists as they detonate bombs, electrocute vegetables, and turn air into a liquid!

Full programme online at: www.cambridgescience.org or please call 01223 766766 to request a hard copy.

Practitioner Opportunity in Herefordshire

Clehonger C of E  Primary School are looking for

a versatile creative practitioner (or maybe even two!) 

About the School:
Clehonger School is a small rural primary school five miles south of Hereford city. Our children come both from the village itself and from the outskirts of the city. We are proud of our Values based ethos and of the well behaved and enthusiastic pupils. (Please check out our website www.clehongerschool.co.uk )
About the project:
Our Y5 and Y1 children have been thinking about what makes good learning and have come up with the following ideas: painting, modeling, role play, drama, outside work, ICT stuff, discussion, and writing. They are ‘active learners’. They are particularly keen to learn more about theatre, drama, film and story making. There may be an opening for one versatile company or two artists, whose skills complement each other.
We want to engage children in different kinds of writing through this process: As practitioners you do not have to worry about this too much but it may help in your application if you can demonstrate an interest in creative learning.

This is our enquiry question.
How can we encourage children to become enthusiastic writers with a real sense of purpose and relevance for their writing?
Project details and objectives:
Y5 & 1 want to create a project during the summer term, with support from an artist who can help them with skills their every day teachers do not have.

This is what the children say:
We would like someone who listens and helps us to do things our own way; someone with a good imagination and lots of ideas. Someone calm, but confident.
We are excited, funny, sporty and artistic. We are hard working.
This is what the adults say:
We are keen to work with one or two practitioners who can help the children realise their vision of creating a theatre project (whether live or film based). The younger children are interested in stories and how they become films or animations, while the older group are fascinated by all the different roles that may be involved in producing a piece of film or theatre. The project is particularly exciting because we have no pre-conceived ideas of our end product and it is very much the result of whole class discussions. We hope that we will all learn new skills and have opportunities to be more creative and innovative.
The project can run as two parallel themes or be a joint project between the two classes.

Nuts & Bolts
Available budget to pay external partners:
The total budget for the project is £4,000 which will cover all project costs including partner's time, expenses, materials and all other project costs. The successful practitioner, the school, and the Creative Partnerships Agent will confirm the breakdown of the budget and the number of days during the early planning stages before a contract is signed.
Please write to us and demonstrate:

• An outline of your practice and your personality in a learning environment
• how your practice contributes to children’s learning.
• An ability to work collaboratively with teachers and young people.
• An understanding of our enquiry question and the relevance of your skills.

Please forward your letter of application to....
Sue Jones smjones@clehonger.hereford.sch.uk
Adrian Higgins adrian@artisticinteriors.co.uk
Application deadline: 21 March 2010
Notified shortlist : 24 March 2010
Interviews: 29 March 2010 Clehonger Primary School.
Estimated timescale of the project:
Project planning, delivery and evaluation during the summer term 2010.
NB: In addition to your letter of application
Please also provide a relevant CV and two references from providers you have worked in partnership with before.
If you are not available for interview if/when called this may invalidate your tender.
If you tender as an organisation then the person who will work directly with teachers, children and young people must be the person attending interview.
A current Enhanced CRB Disclosure and public liability insurance of at least £ 5million is a condition for application.
If you require any further information about the school and our aspirations for our Creative Partnership programme, please do not hesitate to contact Adrian Higgins on 0797 1588832 or email adrian@artisticinterios.co.uk
For more information about our school – please go to www.clehongerschool.co.uk
For more information about Bright Space – please go to www.brightspace.org.uk
For more information about CP – please go to www.creative-partnerships.com 

Work Experience for Young People with the BBC (deadline 14.March 2010)