“It has been great to broaden our curriculum and look at diversity through a range of subject areas which we have in the past shied away from. We found the children to be much more mature and receptive than we expected and this has encouraged us to open up dialogue and bring in more discussion-based lessons.”

– TEACHER - MOORPARK JUNIOR

Creativity is one of the best ways of helping young people understand the views and experiences of others, and is uniquely placed to integrate with other subjects and underpin cross-curricular learning. The range of themes and topics covered developed widely over the 3 years ranging from the Greeks, Egyptians and Victorians to migration and diverse communities. The PHSE curriculum was a particularly good area to cover the through the arts and fuelled a lot of the best creative work covered over the project. Exploring themes of Rights, identity and protest and resulted in some excellent workshops such as a music session on exploring how composers have used music to protest and draw attention to social issues linked to the suffragettes and women’s right’s movement which examined female composers pre 21st century and led to students composing their own works. Pride week was expressed through art alongside public art exploring the BLM movement, Islamic representation, feminism and environmental activism. Gender and leadership in Ancient Egypt, the Holocaust, discrimination and diverse communities and human geography were some of the topics explored through drama.

The Art of Inclusion Training Scheme

The Art of Inclusion was a training programme delivered across the 3 years to reach different cohorts of applicants. It aimed to support artists in using their artistic practice to deliver cross-curricular sessions, whilst also helping young people develop their understanding of diversity and inclusion delivered by E Project Artists Jo Carey (theatre practitioner) and Sophie Gresswell (visual artist). Training took place across two full days with a further day of ‘placements’ in schools, where participants had the opportunity to deliver a session and receive feedback through observation from one of the trainers and another trainee:

“I will take from the project many things. First, I will take a bolstered sense of confidence that my practice is something I can do. I will also take with me the importance of building up a repertoire of activities that I can pull out of a hat if needed. The most valuable thing I will take with me is the significance of being fully planned and prepared before a session, but once the session has started allow the plan to adapt to the shape of the children in the room.”

– TRAINEE

We have put together some of these workshop activities into Lesson Plans which can be found in the E Project Education Zone so that other schools can benefit from the work that was created during the project. Alongside a range of Lessons are some CPD development opportunities developing Skills and Techniques and some of the Warm Ups our artists used during their sessions.