Activity
Building Brave Spaces
The Spark Arts for Children are excited to build on our previous learning and education work to date through our new Building Brave Spaces project, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. This project will explore how theatre can harness and amplify children’s voices and really place them at the heart of our work with schools.
About the project
Over the next two years we will work with 8 schools to explore how performing arts pedagogy can improve children’s voice and agency in both the classroom and across whole schools. This work will support the PSHE curriculum and wellbeing strategies in schools, as well as supporting oracy development.
- We will examine how this work supports wellbeing including a focus on developing personal agency, sense of self, belonging, resilience, curiosity and emotional literacy.
- We will work collaboratively with schools and support the professional development and networking of teachers to ensure learning from this approach is shared across schools and embedded in school development strategies.
- We will share learning from the project through a national symposium at the end of 2025, allowing a springboard for further conversations and development.
Building Brave Spaces Takeover 2024
As part of the Spark Festival May 2024 four schools co-created two Takeover Events on Saturday 18th May. 2024. Working alongside lead artist Sam Redway, children from the four schools – Mellor Community Primary, Queensmead Primary Academy, Mayflower Primary and Falcons Primary – led their imaginations run riot and took over Leicester Museum and Gallery and De Montfort University Gallery.
Thanks to the school Creativity Councils and our partners, the Gallery at the Vijay Patel Building, De Montfort University and Leicester Museum and Art Gallery were transformed into hubs of creativity with lots of free activities for families.
Here is an insight into the day….
Next steps...
These four schools are now taking the skills they learnt from the Takeover project and are developing projects back in their schools.
Four new schools will join the project in 2024 – 2025 and are developing new Creativity Councils in each school who will co-create Takeover events on 17th May 2025.
