FINAL REPORT ON MY PLANETBy

Z-arts is a community education charity who were awarded the Lever Prize by the North West Business Leadership Team in 2017 to deliver My Planet, a community

project designed to increase the motivation, engagement, skills and enhance creativity in primary school children.

Thanks to NWBLT members who provided visits and assistance to Z-Arts:-- Accenture- Addleshaw Goddard- Alstom- Arup- BASF- Dewhurst Torevell - The University of Liverpool for support in producing this report- The University of Manchester- Virgin- Warren Partners

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Background

Following a period of investment in STEM subjects and an emphasis on establishing maths and literacy in schools, there is an increasing interest in the role of creativity in science and wider education (Daud et al. 2012; Davies et al, 2013; Pecheanu & Tudorie, 2015). Research has established how different projects that introduce new ways of teaching science have been found to increase children’s engagement with science topics and improve their confidence to experiment and make new links (Jarvis & Pell, 2002). Other studies have looked at how parental engagement and support can assist children’s motivation and success in science at school (Thomas & Strunck, 2017). Educational initiatives have also been directed to raise the aspirations of all children, particularly those children and young people who may lack obvious role models in areas of employment. For example, there remains an under representation of women in science, business and industry and the numbers of people from BME backgrounds remain low in many professions in the UK (Fadigan & Hammrich, 2004).

More generally it is recognised that children in the UK who are growing up in families on low income may have limited aspirations, poorer experiences of education and/or the lack resources and advice they need to achieve them (Reay, 2001; Archer et al. 2014; Wheeler, 2017). These issues of limited aspirations or opportunities may also intersect with ethnicity and cultural values, with children who are recent migrants, or first generation British born, may need additional support and guidance to navigate systems and access opportunities that may be open to them (Archer et al. 2007; Khattab, 2015). However there are also concerns that while many children living in families on low income may have high aspirations for their futures, these are unrealistic and that this may lead to later disengagement with education (St Clair & Benjamin, 2011; Holloway & Pimlott-Wilson, 2011).

Z-Arts and My Planet

Z-arts, www.z-arts.org, is a community education charity who were awarded the Lever Prize by the North West Business Leadership Team to deliver My Planet, a community project designed to increase the motivation, engagement, skills and enhance creativity in primary school children. The programme was designed to deliver aspects of the national curriculum through the medium of arts, to encourage school children to approach the learning of concepts, ideas and practice in new ways in order to stimulate new levels of engagement with conventional subjects in science, mathematics and other areas. My Planet was delivered through a series of workshops whereby children in a single class or 30 children in Year 4 (aged 8-9 years) designed a new planet and society, delivered in a series of three weekly blocks over a year by different artists. One of the artists who was part of the team who conceived and delivered my planet described it as follows:

Ground Control is an interactive experience for four, up to forty seven to eleven year olds, which is about them deciding what they like about earth and what they don’t like about earth, in the guise to sort of come up with a new planet, and they get to make some decisions. So I think really for us it was about giving young people a voice, asking them to think about the world around them today, and ask them what they

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would want to do to change it, if they had the opportunity to sort of start again, and to put that into fiction.

The artists independently or collaboratively designed and delivered particular sessions based on previously identified elements of the national curriculum, and were supported by Z-arts to access to additional materials and resources as needed. The classroom teacher and classroom assistant were present while the sessions were delivered, and were on hand to assist or deal with any additional needs of the children. The children created a planet called Modenbur, and through the different sessions across the three weeks, they designed and created their own society and environment.

The Research

To understand the impact of My Planet on the lives of the children, this research explored: the views of the children taking part in the project; the artists delivering the different components; the perspectives of the community workers at Z-arts; and the teacher and the teaching assistant. These accounts have been combined in the report, and identifiers have been reduced to ensure the anonymity of participants.

Eliciting the views of childrenThe semi-structured interviews with children in the Year 4 class took place either in a private room or empty classroom at the school during lesson time, and children attended individually or in groups of two or three as they preferred. All children were asked open questions about their participation in the project and were asked what they enjoyed about the project, what they felt they had learned from taking part and what they would take away with them. At the start of the project the children were asked about what they wanted to achieve when they grew up and at the end of the interview they were asked again any ambitions and whether taking part in the research had changed anything for them. The interviews with 28 children were audio and video recorded and lasted around 7-10 minutes, and the audio files were shared with the researcher (JR) to ensure the anonymity of the participants.

Talking to artists, teachers and community workersThe individual and paired interviews with community workers and teachers were either face to face (n=4) and by telephone (n=8) and lasted around 40 minutes. The face-to-face interviews took place at the Z-arts community centre in Hulme and at the school in East Manchester, UK. All interviews were audio recorded and later transcribed verbatim in preparation for analysis. After an aural check and reading and re-reading the transcripts, data were analysed thematically and initial open codes were combined into themes.

Findings

What Happened?

My Planet was all about creating space for children to engage differently with learning and ideas, and to think about their place in the world, and what they wanted their world, Modenbur, to be. The project gave the artists and the teachers a creative

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space to rethink the curriculum and this provided the children with new ways to learn.

A creative space to rethink the curriculum

The artists were aware of the opportunities open to them to develop materials for the project, and all had delivered similar projects in either school or community settings. They appreciated the support offered by Z-arts and the opportunity to discuss their ideas in advance with members of the team and request additional resources:

… we got them to gather the day before I think it was, you know went to the office and chat with them and kind of made sure that we had all the materials necessary and could kind of put them together and things like that… 002

The classroom teacher was asked to identify elements of the national curriculum that would be suitable to adapt to an arts-based approach to learning, and coincided with the weeks when the project would be running.

I didn’t want to tell them too much in advance because I didn’t know too much about exactly how it was going to be, how each part, how it was exactly going to run myself, so I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to say too much or say anything wrong or give them any sort of preconceptions of what they would be doing. I told them the name of the project and that was, My Planet, and that was about it, I kind of let … because I didn’t want to sort of interfere with the delivery of it either, I sort of saw my own role as more being to help facilitate some of the children being there and making sure everything ran smoothly when they were in school. So I kind of let the children discover it for themselves as they get on with it. CT

The artists were comfortable with the information they were given and preferred the non-prescriptive approach and freedom they had to design the sessions. Principles of creativity and participation underpinned their ideas and they were confident that they could incorporate learning necessary to deliver the more formal learning outcomes required by the school:

It was a little bit more of a free rein because I was told that they were working on a project about, obviously the My Planet project, with [the children’s planet] Modenbur… So I knew that that was their theme but they also wanted to look at the themes of myths and legend as well… And then they were slightly more specific in that they wanted to look at improving their skills with sight-reading, character creation and that sort of thing… 004

The artists were familiar with the concept that art can cross disciplines, and that artistic ideas and principles could underpin the combination of different subjects. For many artists, this enabled them to develop their practice to ensure the quality of delivery:

Ideas were wonderful, you know, it was really nice. I mean my take on community arts projects has always been but I believe in trying to create a framework so that quality will be high. And you know, and I think there are two different approaches -

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one is you just kind of give people materials and let them do whatever they want and then there’s another way where you devise something where you know you can control the quality of the output through your own experience and skills. And so that’s my approach to it. And so the quality of the outputs were really good 006

It was notable that the artists confidently drew on their backgrounds and skills to create teaching materials that related to varied elements of the curriculum. They were quickly able to make links between, for example, music and science and some artists also researched the areas in advance on the internet and found additional materials there:

… as a musician … I’m a percussionist in particular, and specifically a sound percussionist, so essentially this is kind of like my ballpark, where using everyday materials and kind of thinking about how they make different sounds and to have different textures and consistencies 002

Given their backgrounds and their brief by Z-arts, the artists described how the emphasis in their teaching was on creativity and experimentation. All artists talked extensively about their experiences of working with children in other settings and how they had developed their practice over time. Working with different groups of children meant that the artists reflected not only on the content, but also the tone and the style of the delivery, and stressed the importance of bringing fun and enjoyment into their sessions. This artist discussed how her background and training enabled her to revise conventional approaches to education and think about new ways to help the children learn:

I am a musician and I would always say I was doing music. Increasingly quite a lot of my things are kind of cross arts practice, so I work quite a lot for art galleries, I’ve done some kind of arts and crafts projects as well, so we’ve written the music and then created a whole song book with loads of different craft activities and drawings and things, and I do use a lot of drama games as well. So yes, the core of it’s music, but I borrow heavily from other people and things! 003

All artists reflected that many of the links they made did not require a particular stretch of imagination, but were not necessarily standard practice in the delivery of the curriculum. For example this linking of music to the science of vibration enabled an effective and efficient delivery of two aspects simultaneously:

I then came up with an outline of, oh a proposed workshop that was about two hours… So I came up with an outline that essentially allowed the students to interact with different types of materials, so things like springs and slinkies, water, you know, various materials and … to try and get that to recognise the degree to which vibration affected the created, sort of like the … was able to manipulate those materials and thus create sound to do that. 002

In addition to linking the delivery of the music curriculum and the science curriculum around sounds waves and vibrations, another artist used rhythm and pitch to understand the structure of stories and how using tempo and silences can enhance story telling and convey meaning. By exploring the possibilities of teaching science

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through music, artists were able to see the potential for music to deliver other elements of the curriculum:

… we listened to other pieces of music… that made them think of different stories and they drew what the music made them think of, so we looked at the way that music can make you feel in different ways, we looked at the building blocks of music, so like pitch, dynamic, tempo, silence, all that kind of stuff… So as far as I was concerned, I was delivering a creative outcome, in actually very much the same way as I would normally do it, but then you map, when you map it onto the curriculum, you realise you’re covering loads and loads of extra blocks and actually what I generally do is workshops actually covers huge amounts of curriculum material anyway. Yeah, I mean all the time, you’re doing rhyming, you’re doing working to a meter, accentation of where the other words fit in, synonyms, adjectives, like you could cover the entire English syllabus I think probably through music. 003

New ways to learn

Through this engagement the artists were aware that it wasn’t simply the content of the arts elements that transformed the encounter, but the approach to teaching and learning underpinning arts education. This participant stressed that the principles of play, experimentation and improvisation:

…all we’re really talking about is, can we play in each one of these fields? And it doesn’t have to do with the arts specifically because what the arts as sort of like a mentality or way of moving through the world is inspiring is the ability to play, right, and we can play when it comes to science, right, because we can play with kind of, you know, what happens if we mix these two chemicals together, what kind of you know crazy funky explosion or change in the gas you know are we going to get, right? What happens when we decided to play with principles of gravity? 002

While these elements are present in science, and much of science teaching is based on practical experimentation and observation, it is the creativity, freedom and play that the artists believe that they were able to introduce and that made these sessions successful. The artists were aware that the children were responsive to them as outsiders coming into school and that they also knew that they were not teachers, and so responded to them in different ways. This artist reflected that the more active approach to the project was likely to resonate with children who may find sitting and writing a more difficult task:

… for me the most exciting ones are the kids that like really struggle with mainstream education, or the kids that have English as a second or additional language, just being allowed to be creative in a different way without having to use so many words 003

The class teacher also commented on how bringing in the artists created a very positive dynamic for the children and by creating a ‘level playing field’ enabled the children to present themselves in new ways:

And I think also working with different adults, because the adults are new to them, the positive aspect of that is that it gives the children, they have maybe less fear about

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sort of … they might feel as though the adult has less of a preconceived notion of what they can do. And because they’re outside of their traditional environment, they might feel as though actually it’s more of a level playing field and it gives them a bit more confidence to express themselves, particularly if they’re not, particularly when the children, if for example really struggle with confidence when it comes to writing, if they’re being asked, if they’re not being asked to write anywhere near as much, it might give them more confidence in that way. CT

The artists also stressed that their approach may be different from that of other teachers and that they had to negotiate rather than instruct:

Like we talk about, we don’t tell people what to do, it’s more of an invitation to do things, but … it’s a really interesting negotiation between sort of when you give instructions, when you imagine those instructions to be completed and when the work can continue. And obviously you can go as fast as, you have to go as fast as potentially the slowest person… 006

The artists successfully created new ways to learn for the children. This boy commented on how the sessions with My Planet led to a more active engagement with subjects and learning:

We did lots of stuff and lots of that we did we never did in our whole life…Like it was different and how we learn more than like active stuff and … more so we know planets that have blown up and gone. B1

My Planet enabled the artists to communicate with the children in new ways, and involved the children in practical tasks. There was an emphasis in many of the planned lessons on moving the children away from the classroom to other spaces and to allow them to learn literally ‘on their feet’ through practical experiments and direct observations. This girl really enjoyed the opportunity to move her seat and do new activities:

Yeah, we met, we did lots of groups, like lots of table group working and we did, yeah, I moved a lot around the seats.And what did you think about that?… it’s better than … because like when you come you already know where you’re sitting, but when you move it’s more exciting because like, like you didn’t sit there before, it’s like your first time sitting there and it’s, it’s not like the same thing like every time... Yeah, because we moved around, we were talking more. G7

The class teacher observed the sessions and was very aware that some children would welcome the chance to learn differently:

I think the value of doing it is that it is … you have to include that style of teaching to engage a full range of children. There are some children that do respond quite well to traditional classroom dynamic, and some children who … I mean all children do respond to that, but for some children, to really kind of grab them and keep them engaged, they need, they need activities that involve them doing with their hands and making, rather than just, rather than simply reading and writing, and getting up and

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doing drama and moving around. So that kind of approach is, is really, really important CT

This artist was relaxed about the high levels of noise and movement from the children and saw their shouting out as evidence of their enthusiasm and interest in the topic:

And I welcome people just talking and shouting and getting involved or them telling you, because it doesn’t actually matter that much, there are moments I suppose when actually it would be best if they were quiet and listen, but generally speaking I welcome people chipping in, and giving ideas. And influencing what I’m doing, you know, and them realising that they could do that was great…I’d rather them be on their feet doing things than writing things down in their books 004

When asked to reflect on how the children responded to the different sessions, the artists commented on the high level of engagement from the majority of children with the activities. This boy reflected how there was a different approach and new materials in My Planet and he found this stimulating:

Because at school, and like in Z-ARTS they have different things, and we don’t have it in our school. B3

The artists commented on the energy in the rooms as they delivered their sessions, and how excited and motivated the children were to have someone come into the school to work with them:

…when I was in front of the class talking, they were normally very good, there were a few noisy ones, and like I say the concentration of some of the children wasn’t fantastic. But it was generally … generally very, very good. They were very energetic children and it was, yeah, it was certainly … you had to put the energy into the two days because they were so energetic themselves, you know. But when I was story-telling to them they, they just sort of shut up and listened, which was quite rewarding really. 004

As the project was around the creation of a planet, the children appeared to appreciate the opportunity to come forward with their own ideas and to have them discussed and incorporated into the collective endeavour. This girl spoke specifically about the importance to her of having a chance to share her ideas and have them listened to:

Z-arts are really inclusive with our ideas. They give us the chances to share our ideas, it um, makes us feel like we really fit in… our ideas want to be heard and our ideas really matter G8

This girl also reflected about how being listened to made her feel more ‘important’:

When people listen to your ideas, you might feel a bit more, like, that person speaking in a more important person… It gives me a chance to speak G9

This girl also reflected that the children had opportunities to learn from each other and could appreciate other people’s ideas as well as their own:

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Yeah, my information changed because like I didn’t know some things that like we, I didn’t know, then when we did this project, like I found new words and what they mean and information.OK, great. And did you get to mix with different people?Yeah, I got to work in different groups.And what was that like?Like it was fun because you find out other people’s ideas and like I found lots of ideas that I changed it to my ideas G9

This artist said how they believed that the success of their session, which involved writing and then singing a song was due to the children’s sense of involvement in and collective ownership of the process:

Them singing the track at the end, like having written the lyrics, knowing the tune, having them chosen it at the performance the week before, that feeling of kind of complete connectedness and that that was the track they’d chosen, but they’d re-written it as well. They also absolutely loved the design technology stuff… the building instruments, really loved that. They built … I just gave them a load of junk and they basically built junk percussion instruments, so like shakers, little drum things, filled, you know, filled with peas and beans and stuff like that, they absolutely loved that! 003

This artist specifically designed a session to let the children speak individually in front of their class and commented on how much the children enjoyed both talking and listening in the session:

But we had sort of statements to start with, like ‘I believe that’ … [the children] just come as a line down the centre of the room and someone has, someone reads out a statement, and they put themselves on the line, on the scale, depending on how much they agree or disagree with that statement. And then they get interviewed down the line about why they’ve chosen to stand where they have. And that, that’s a really interesting exercise to do with anybody, not just young people. And [name of school], I remember… really enjoyed that exercise, they really enjoyed having the opportunity to …have their own voice heard by their classmates. 006

The artists were briefed about the school and knew that the children could be challenging to teach. Generally the artists were very positive about the children and focussed very much on what they had been able to achieve rather than any negative aspects of the sessions, and stressed that they were able to cope and adapt to the class, though some needed the support of the teachers to maintain control.

And so I mean but they were all, they were all generally like really excited and really interested in being involved in it and kind of, you know … there obviously were some kids who were, you know, everybody now and again has a crappy day and time… And sort of like that’s no, that’s no big deal. 002

Part of the My Planet week involved trips off site to visit places to enable the children to see how people worked in these settings. The children enjoyed the trip and this girl understood that her experience of the visits linked to the other learning delivered at the school:

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We go on more trips and we do more stuff on stuff, and we do more arts, and we get like, there’s a book that we do arts like every time, every day we use that book like to put our ideas in, and we, and we do, and we do more … more drawing, more ideas, more planning. G6

While children mentioned different sites, the visit to the train workshop of Alstom in Longsight was by far the most popular place for the children to visit:

We liked, we liked to go on the trains and things, and how you will not, you will, we were telling questions to the people that were working in the, in the train and, and they said, we fix trains so people can like, so people can … so the workers can get money and they could try the new train. B2

Both boys and girls talked about the experience of visiting the site and how much they felt they had learned from the experience:

Oh one of my favourite trip that we went to, was that trip that we went to the trains, and like I learned lots of new stuff and like had fun and then my best of it, like when we like find new things and stuff like that…Amazing, wow! And why did you like that trip the most?It’s because I learnt new things and there was lots of new things there. B4

While the My Planet sessions were all about new ways to learn, the artists appreciated having the class teacher and Teaching Assistant present so there was some element of continuity and background knowledge. This artist wanted to put the children into random groups, but appreciated the class teacher getting involved when the children resisted or as problems arose:

I suppose I just put them in random groups quite a lot of the time, and then … which probably because you haven’t got time to worry about those kind of mix and partly because I think it’s good for them because they’re going to need to learn those kind of skills in life at some point. So there were some kind of, ooh, you know, I don’t like him, or I don’t want to go with him or he’s … you know. But that, for me, is kind of down to the class teacher, and if there’s a genuine problem, the class teacher will say, actually I need to just shift that person into there or whatever. 003

Another artist also commented on the value of having the teachers there as not only another pair of hands, but someone who the children knew and would respond to:

Yes, yes, he was there the whole time, he was great actually.Right, so what sort of things did he do?Well he basically left us to it, but obviously if there was a little bit of control needed in the classroom, then he was there to make sure that the kids were still behaving themselves. And … yeah, very supportive… I told the story about, a myth about why the sea is salty and it sort of ends, but the story could continue, so I got the children to, to write a proper ending to that story, write it down. And he would go around and you know talk to the kids, as would I and everyone else, just to make sure that they were doing it and if they had any questions and sort of spur them on and spur their

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imaginations on really. So he was fantastic. And … he was very supportive really and very appreciative of what we were doing. 004

What Changed?

The participants (children and adults) discussed how taking part in the project had encouraged the children to think about things differently and as a result, the teachers, artists and community workers had observed changes in the children. In particular the project created new opportunities for the children to shine and also working with the children’s aspirations meant that they talked about their futures and had ideas about how to get there.

Opportunities for children to shine

The different learning activities, including a session meeting people to talk about their jobs and their careers and the trips to workplaces meant that the children engaged with different people in sometimes unfamiliar places. The adults involved in the project were generally very impressed with the way in which many children were able to interact with the people they met:

Some of the children surprised me, they were really confident talking to adults they’d never met before. Yeah, we’ve got a girl in our class, she’s really, really quiet, I’ve seen her coming out of her shell a bit more now. So I think it’s helped with her confidence, meeting all these different people and with like big jobs! CA

The teachers believed that all of the children had gained valuable learning and social experiences from taking part in the project, but when prompted, reflected on some particular children that they thought had really achieved more than expected:

There’s a boy called [name of boy] who got a lot out of a lot of sessions. He got a lot out of anything to do with the engineering, and he loves building, making things. I mean he’s somebody who’s unconfident when it comes to his writing, he really struggles with spelling, presentation and … he’s not, I wouldn’t say he’s a reluctant writer, he does do his writing but it’s not where he thrives, he thrives in more practical things, making things, he’s part of our school gardening club, he loves being outside, all that kind of thing. And he really got a kick out of the engineering side of things… got a kick out of doing the rap… And he in particular is somebody who has really, really thrived off the back of, off the back of these activities that we’ve done. CT

While this child was achieving in the mainstream classroom, another child identified by the class teacher as someone who had benefitted tended to struggle with writing. The emphasis on participatory and verbal exercised helped this boy to express himself and engage in learning in new ways:

I mean it’s been good to see somebody, so [name of boy] is somebody who stands out as being somebody who … he has a, he has a bit of a stammer and he’s autistic, and he can sometimes struggle with expressing himself, and kind of being given the opportunity to do some of the activities that we’ve done has given him the opportunity

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to express himself and … talk about, talk about things in … and I think beneficial for him, he needs the opportunity to talk. Quite a few children who like having the opportunity to verbalise their ideas has been very important, and the project’s allowed them to do that. CT

Artists also commented that their activities seem to resonate well with some children who may not always shine in a more conventional classroom environment. For example in a singing exercise, one girl sang and it seemed as if they had never done so before:

… And there were a couple of kids actually on this particular project whose voices were incredible, and when they sang… there was one girl actually in that class who was almost violent, but she would sing and … And that was probably one of the few times the class went quiet and like, wow, she’s got a really good voice …I think she probably knew, but I’m not sure the other kids did, or if they did, even though, even if they did, they really enjoyed hearing her sing, because it was a lovely, she had a really lovely voice. 003

Another example is for a girl who engaged well with a writing task and had the confidence to read it to the rest of her class:

There’s always a few children who will be the first to put their hands up… come up to the front of the class and then there’ll be those who never do … And I know, because the teacher said, … there was one girl who had written a fantastic opening to a story. And she’d written a fantastic, sort of almost journalistic piece about you know a mystery inside a lake or under a mountain, or something … something mysterious going on… And I know from the teacher’s response to what she did, because he was sat next to her while she was writing it down, that it was very, it was a very good piece for her… she had a big smile on her face, you know, and it was very journalistic, I thought, ooh you know, there’s a future journalist for you there. 004

The ability of the approach by the artists to spark the interest of children who may not previously had either the motivation or confidence to show their potential was believed by teachers and the artists to underpin the real value of the project. While the children who were already achieving at school did take part fully in the activities and who also appeared to continue to enjoy and excel in many areas of the project, it was the potential to inspire the more withdrawn children, or those with learning or behavioural difficulties that impressed the artists and reminded them not to make snap judgements about who may be capable of doing what:

I have seen young people come up to the microphone at the, who at the start I wouldn’t have expected to want to say anything, and then they’ve come up and they’ve said something and you end up having a conversation with a young person about, I don’t know, about why they want, why they’ve chosen to take a zoo to the planet… and you’re like, well I didn’t expect to speak to you at the start of the show because it, you looked a tiny bit like you didn’t quite know what was going on, because obviously we can see them. And so I think you can’t, you can’t ever really know just by looking at a young person and seeing them in the, like in that immediate environment how they’ll be at the end of the show because obviously it’s an unusual situation to be put into for them. 006

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While the children found it easy to talk about what they enjoyed about the project, they found it harder to articulate what may have changed for them. This girl said that she felt more confident about talking in front of the class, but partly because she was interested in the topic and was enjoying the experience of learning:

Do you think, has it made a difference to you from, from doing the project to in, being in the class now?A little bit, maybe …In what way.Confident.You feel …?More confident like putting my hand up and answering.OK, why do you think that is?Because like I like art and like, like and like … I … like I just like, it was fun so I put my hand up and I like had fun and it was … because I was interested, that’s why I put my hand up. G5

While the artists found it harder to detect changed behaviour in the children as they didn’t know them well, the teachers were quick to identify how well most of the children responded to the different activities and how individual children really surprised them.

… some of our children, they are, one of them’s very shy, hardly talks, she was really into it. And there’s another one, she’s got a lot of confidence issue, she participated in everything, you know … Yeah, for some children it’s out of their comfort zone but they’re OK, you know, they just got on really well. CA

One of the most positive changes observed by the class teacher was the enhanced ability for the class to engage with the project over the subsequent weeks as they learned how to work in new ways. While some of the children struggled to find the new boundaries in the more open spaces provided by the artists during the first few sessions, the teacher believed that they had learned new ways to behave:

But certainly as the project’s gone on, I’ve seen an improvement and an increase in their ability to do that, to show their behaviours independently. And I think just in general as well, once they actually got into an activity, for some of them it’s a very engaging way of getting them engaged in something. For example, in science, we did something like sound, can be quite abstract for children to understand exactly what it is, understanding what a sound wave. And so the way that we did it in that session for instance, the way it was delivered, we got some music and lots of visual activities and moving around was very, very effective in engaging them. CT

Working with aspirations

This boy was clear that Z-arts through My Planet was trying to change the way the children thought about learning and their futures and make them positive:

Because Z-ARTS want, I think wanted to change how we were … we were thinking about stuff to happy stuff. B1

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As well as aiming to increase engagement through the arts and fostering creativity, the project My Planet was designed to raise aspirations among the children in the school. By openly discussing ideas and sharing opinions, the children were encouraged to think about possibilities and opportunities that may be open to them:

… it was about My Planet, and I’d sort of framed the whole thing around, well if it’s your planet, it’s whatever you want to be, and then use it to talk about aspiration and about you know what, if you can make the world what you wanted it to be, what world would you make it? So it was about you know, it was about sort of trying to sort of say that you know it’s your future, you know your ideas of what you think would be a good world to live in, you can work towards those things in a very positive sense. And I mean, and I think the arts enable that really well. The arts are, the arts are a perfect tool for learning… it’s a great way of actually engaging people in ideas, and actually engaging people in debates about ideas. 006

For this boy, the project made him think about engineering as a possible future career and he seemed clear that he had learned about what he needed to do through the project:

So with the trips, you’ve obviously seen lots of people doing lots of different jobs and things, do you, did you know what you wanted to do when you were older, before you started this project?No.No? Do you know now?Yeah.What do you want to do?Ehm … engineer.Oh wow, that’s amazing. What makes you want to be an engineer?Ehm, so we can build, so we can build, I like building lots, we can make up and like we can build houses … And what do you think you need to do in order to be that person?To build lots of stuff … to … to learn how you can be an engineer and learn well, and be good in school and … university. B1

The class teacher reflected that while the children did have high aspirations, they were unclear about what they may need to do to achieve them, and so the sessions where the children could talk to people in careers had been particularly valuable to some of the children:

I think our children in general, they have quite high aspirations for the things that they want to be, but … less, some of them have less of an understanding of what it would take to become that. And I think for some of them, sort of seeing, going to say, go speaking to engineers, how did you become an engineer, what did you have to do to become an engineer, why did you become an engineer, what does your job actually involve? Those kind of things, I think is what they’ve really taken from it. CT

This girl already had high aspirations to be a doctor, but after the sessions, she was considering engineering as a possible career, and felt that there was time to decide just

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what she wanted to do and wanted opportunities to talk to people directly about their careers and what they involved:

Because my mum’s at Lloyds Pharmacy, I think I want to be a doctor, but, but on the last day we had like, we had like new people coming to us, like where they work, and then it might, like I might be an engineer or doctor, I’m not like deciding yet which one I want to be.OK, so was it useful to meet all those people on the career, that careers day?Yeah.Why was it useful?Because and you don’t, because I don’t really know what to be, so I was finding out like which one was the best, I was asking like the best questions that I want like to happen, I was asking them, so I could see like in the future what’s going to happen. G8

These two girls had career goals before the project, but were now interested in the arts as possible additional or alternative careers:

What kind of job did you want to do before you started this project?G1 I wanted to be a teacher.A teacher, what about you?G2 Doctor.And what do you think now? Is that still the same or is it different?G1 Different.So what would you like to do … if you could do any job now, when you’re older, what would it be?G1 An artist.G2 A writer.A writer? OK. And why do you think that those would be good jobs?G1 Because when Z-arts came, they do lots of arts and then I found art interesting.too.

These accounts and others stress the importance of talking to children about alternatives and possibilities in terms of future education and careers, and making them aware of a range of possibilities that may be open to them. The class teacher believed that the children had progressed during the year and that the project had very positive effects on the children and their ability to engage with their other school work:

I think, I think it has. I mean it’s one of those things that in my opinion, my class’s like engagement, the quality of their writing and their conscientiousness, all that kind of thing has improved, and their team work and … it has improved as the year’s gone on. And I certainly think that the project has had an impact on that. It’s one of those things that you, kind of you like to think that the children would be continually making progress in those areas anyway. But I do certainly think the project has played a role in that. CT

Challenges

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While all of the participants in the project were very positive about the project, it is worth highlighting some of the issues that were mentioned in passing, and are referred to in earlier sections of this report. These issues included the uncertainty of knowing what to expect and just how the children would engage with an activity or task, and the need to improvise and keep flexible in the Constantly changing landscape. Other issues around arrangement and communication relate to Logistics and planning, and community workers, artists and teachers reflected that some children found Group work challenging during the early stages of the project.

Constantly changing landscape

Improvisation and flexibility were believed to be key to the effective delivery of the sessions. The artists were experienced in dealing with children who have limited attention, may not enjoy or engage with activities, or may engage in ways that are disruptive to the running of the planned activity. Planning and delivering the sessions was not always straightforward and the artists were aware that they needed to work with whatever was going on during the school day and to have the support of teachers to deliver their sessions:

… communication through music as well, in a different way, so for kids who struggle to communicate. It’s cross-cultural. It’s participatory. It’s, they have a sense of ownership and pride. And often the learning will happen without them realising. In terms of reservations, it needs to be a space where there can be noise, you wouldn’t believe the number of schools who go, oh I didn’t realise you were going to be making noise… there needs to be a really strong leadership from the teachers, who need to be doing the… discipline because that’s not what the artists should be doing because that then takes away from what you’re trying to do. There will be a level of chaos and it will be different. 003

The artists reflected that they needed to test and retest what would work on that day, with that particular group:

It was just too difficult and I tried to do a couple of exercises, we did one and it was alright, I managed to keep them under control and it was absolutely fine, and we started the second one and they just couldn’t do it [laughs], I had to say to the teacher, I think they might need to go back to the classroom! And so we did, and we did something else instead, which was we talked about what characters you might find in a mystery or mythical type of story, and we listed all the characters, and then I got them to describe what these characters would look like and every, you know, and every word they used to describe the witch or the scientist or whatever, we would write it down… So we did that instead, which seemed to work, which seemed to work a treat. But yes, quite a bit of improvisation over the … over the two days, because you’d try something and go, OK that’s, that’s not going to work and do something else. 004

However the artists themselves remained experimental in their approach as part of their past learning with children was not to ‘over plan’ each session, but to work with the people, setting and the time they had available. They described how they had all run sessions during My Planet that they had to adapt, either because of last minute

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changes to the timing and resourcing of the session, but also in response to the behaviour and engagement of the children:

… I got given a brief of, we want you to write a national anthem, and I said, OK great, and they’d already, a part of the performance that they went to see, chosen one of the national anthems that the theatre company had provided. So I took that and decided to change slightly as it were, as we went along, I was going to originally compose a tune with them, but they were just so chaotic as a class I didn’t! So what we actually did, we re-wrote the words to that national anthem, so they’d already chosen their anthem, we wrote the words from the class. 003

Logistics and planning

Despite the advance communication with the school and between the artists and Z-arts there were some issues around the delivery of sessions. So it was hard for the artists to assume prior learning, as topics they had expected to be covered in advance of their visit had not yet been covered, and some of the areas they had been asked to work on had already been covered. In addition, the school inevitably scheduled additional session in periods the artists had expected to teach in, which meant the children were unavailable at times, or sessions were split, and also expected rooms were not available.

The only thing that was a little confusing was that we walked in, I think it was a morning session that day, and they, the school had an assembly that was happening, right in the middle of the time period that we were due to deliver the workshop. So we basically delivered it for about an hour and then, I think about an hour and twenty minutes I think, and then they went off for a workshop for like another forty five, or to this assembly for like forty five minutes, and then they came back for another twenty or so, which would not have been a problem at all, except that nobody had informed us that that was the case. 002

The artists dealt well with the confusion this caused but did comment that this did not make it easy for them to teach and advance notice would be appreciated.

Group work

Interestingly, most of the artists commented that this particular class of children seemed to struggle with the freedom to move around outside the classroom and even away from their desks. In particular group work seemed to challenge them and the artists needed to regularly return the children to their desks to produce any written work and to calm down during the sessions:

… this particular class really, really struggled with working in groups, and as increasingly I’m finding in schools actually, they actually can’t self-manage very well, and it sometimes is better… they find it’s easier when they’re just sat at a desk, working quietly, doing English or whatever, and actually what I think most of us found in that first week, I don’t know about the rest of the project, but, was that the only time the kids were quiet and manageable was when they were sat at their desks writing some lyrics in their books, or like words, because they knew the expectations of that, whereas they got very over-excited the rest of the time! [laughs] … just

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constant noise, and they were not, they weren’t very good at working together, so like if they had their turn, then they, that meant that they could be noisy because that was fine. So yeah, it was quite interesting kind of in terms of trying to be really creative and actually them quite struggling with that as a thing. Yes, and I think they’re unaccustomed to knowing how to self-moderate if something is… exciting and different. 003

These artists commented that the children seemed unaccustomed to the practice of discussing ideas in small groups and the freedom to move around and talk as part of learning. They also reflected on the relative youth of the children and also their levels of concentration in unsupervised sessions:

They just didn’t have the concentration, they just didn’t have the concentration to do it. In a classroom environment … yeah, we could always bring it back down, and that they sort of knew what the rules were then. I think with, maybe with slightly older children, with children with, who were able to concentrate a little bit more, because their concentration levels weren’t brilliant I have to say. There were some very good kids in there, but generally the concentration levels were a bit weak. Yeah, it just … I thought I’d give it a go! [laughs] 004

The class teacher agreed that some children really struggled to engage in groups, but rather than attribute this to poor concentration, they highlighted issues of existing dynamics between children and low self-esteem. They noted that this required a sustained effort to foster in a classroom environment:

…some of the children identified themselves as being sort of lower ability, not understanding things as well. And I think for those children, at first, and certainly in my experience, through my own teaching and through this project, they find it, they can find it difficult doing group work because they have low self-esteem and they really worry that their contribution isn’t worthwhile, it’s not going to be valued. And I think … it’s something I’ve tried to work on with them through this year to improve that and sort of help give them a voice and encourage them to be part of those group activities. And this project enabled them to do that as well, and really given them a platform, an opportunity to do that. CT

One of the artists presented a further alternative explanation as to why the children became harder to manage and linked their apparently chaotic behaviour to the levels of energy, excitement and absorption in the task.

I think it has to do with, you know, obviously they’re, are they doing the worksheet, but that’s like the least interesting out of all of the indicators. I think one of the more interesting ones is like are we losing track of time? That seems to be an indicator that’s like really a positive one … because if we lose track of time, it means we’re engrossed in the activities and not just for me, but like every single student kind of across the board, or most of the students anyway is engrossed in the activity enough to be like, oh I have to move now, I have to take my … where’s my paper, where’s my pencil, where do I go next … what … you know like all that like confusion in some way of the rotation in between is like indicative of, oh I’m so excited that I got to play with this like coat-hanger doo da, like this tuning fork or whatever it even is, right, or

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I got to hear my friend’s heartbeat you know through this like made up stethoscope, you know. 002

Possibilities of the project

The project had raised expectations among the children and they said that they talked about the weeks they spent with My Planet and hoped that they would get to do other trips and activities in the future. This boy wanted to go to more places and to keep seeing and experiencing new things:

Like most of the time we talk about Z-ARTS, about that we want to go again. Yeah, and like … something like more trips and … to places that we never even seen. B1

The class teacher reflected that it was sometimes hard for teachers to make space in the curriculum for the arts, as other subjects took priority. However they reflected that watching the artists link arts to the core subjects of maths, science and English had made them consider how they could continue this practice:

In the average day, not necessarily, because kind of across, across a week, I try to make sure that there’s some sort of arts aspect to something that we do, whether that’s creating visual art or doing some sort of drama or music, there’s always something in there. And as much as possible, links to maybe something that we’re doing in English or science or whatever our topic might happen to be, try to link it into that. And we do have external music teachers in as well, who work with the children… doing guitars and drumming. So we try to put it in but on a day to day basis, there’s … some days there just isn’t time, we do maths and English in the morning, and then if we’ve got to do maybe science, PE … it’s maybe not always time to fit it in as explicitly as you might like. CT

The artists were convinced that the arts could easily be introduced into the curriculum and this artist saw school as the perfect setting to deliver their ideas:

And I think that in a classroom is perfect… a school, is actually a brilliant way to actually talk about the ideas around those different subjects. I do think the arts are a really important thing to bring into school settings… I would argue it actually it works better in school than it does outside…The arts work better in educational environments than they do within galleries. I think they’re much more aligned in those contexts 006

This artist could also see the possibility to use music to inform maths teaching, and to deliver the curriculum in an innovative way, without compromising the core learning in either subject:

And a lot of the maths syllabus as well… So looking at tempo, looking at the sub-division of beats, so you can look at fractions and multiples and sequences, you can look at, you can go into the science side of it and about the hertz and the fact the different pitches have different hertz things, and if you double the, double the … if you go up an octave it doubles the pitch and … or the other way round, whichever way round it is. So yeah, there’s loads you can do. You can look at time signatures, multi … yeah, multiples and sub-divisions and you can do conducting, you can look at

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shapes and triangles and things like that and … yeah, there’s loads, you could do it all! 003

The teaching assistant had also observed the sessions and was impressed by the creative way in which the artists taught the children two or more subjects at once, and made a comprehensive whole out of diverse elements:

Oh, no they had a writer come in one day doing writing with them, and most of the words were like linked into maths or … everything was linked in to what we’ve been studying… everything was linked in somehow. And I thought it was quite clever how they did it, how they were linking in what they were doing in class with you know the projects. I thought, I did think that actually that’s quite clever how they done that. So I don’t think they’re suffering, curriculum-wise, I don’t think they’re suffering. TA

DiscussionThe accounts from the artists delivering My Planet emphasise how the opportunities to introduce further creativity into the curriculum can lead to innovations in the delivery of core subjects, and so offer new chances for children to learn and engage. These fresh ideas and new ways of working challenged the children involved in the project, but all found the experience enjoyable and stimulating. Despite the short-term nature of My Planet, the teachers identified the possibility to continue some of the artist’s approaches as part of their routine delivery of the curriculum. They recognised the benefits of combining the arts with science, mathematics and English language and how the different approaches helped children make the connections between the subjects. In addition, the teachers believed that some of the alternative ways of delivering sessions, through practical tasks and by actively engaging the children with setting the agenda, represented a highly effective way to get complex concepts across to children. That the artists could see so many connections between the arts and core subjects suggests that there are endless possibilities to revise the curriculum once ‘subjects’ and ‘topics’ are conceptualised in different ways. The artists described the process of making many these connections and delivering the sessions as ‘dynamic’ and stressed that teaching this way was both reflexive and temporal rather than a matter of design and then following fixed guidance. It was this fluidity and responsiveness that seemed to help children to make leaps and links in their learning, and to innovate.

The findings from this project have implications for the inequalities agenda in education. This research suggests that children who may not express ideas and engage in subjects taught using conventional classroom methods can be assisted to contribute using the arts to teach science and mathematics. Therefore there is an argument to include an ever diverse mix of teaching methods in classrooms, to enable different children to contribute in various ways. There was no evidence to suggest that the most able children were disadvantaged by the introduction of additional teaching sites and methods, as they continued to achieve, but they had new opportunities to learn from the other children’s ideas and work. Such inclusive strategies can assist more children to ‘learn to learn’, and this research suggests that enhanced engagement with subjects, linked to exposure to different careers and ideas, can raise future aspirations. While some children already had ideas about future selves and careers, others did not, and some children talked about a fresh engagement with their learning to help them

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achieve their goals. Perhaps the most important challenge is to explore how children can maintain their enthusiasm and interest in areas of learning through daily schooling, and how their self-esteem can be supported and raised to help them achieve their aspirations.

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