FREE Offer To Pennine Lancashire Schools

FREE offer to Pennine Lancashire Schools: Work in partnership with your local museum and pilot Arts Award in your classroom

The Pennine Lancashire Museums and Schools programme, funded by Arts Council England and the Department for Education, is part of a three year national programme designed to strengthen educational links between schools and their local museums. The programme involves teachers and museum educators working together to develop new and creative learning sessions in museums, combining museum collections and knowledge with teachers curriculum expertise.

The partnership would now like to invite Pennine Lancashire schools to come forward to take part in the second year of this exciting programme, offering you the opportunity to work in partnership with us to develop a new learning session or programme with one of the participating museums, based on a curriculum area of your choice. All supply, cover costs and expenses will be funded by the project. As well as being a great professional development opportunity for the member of staff involved this is also a great opportunity for your school to be involved in shaping one of your local museums and developing a long term educational, creative and cultural partnership for the future.

How will it work?

If your school is interested in taking part, we will arrange to visit you and explain the programme in more detail. Based on the type of project you would like to pilot with your pupils, we will partner you with one of the participating museums and ensure you are allocated plenty of time to develop and work up the idea for your new sessions with support from the programme team. Once the sessions are developed you will be able to trial them with your pupils through a visit or series of visits to the museum free of charge.

This programme is supported by Curious Minds and this year we are particularly keen to work with primary schools who would like to introduce Arts Award to their pupils, using the local museums as a stimulus for developing exciting curriculum activities and for developing children’s creativity, communication and leadership skills. Arts Award Discover is all about encouraging and inspiring children and young people to enjoy creative activities and develop skills at the same time, finding out about creative people and their work and sharing their experiences with others.

You will be offered free training to become an Arts Award Adviser along with follow up support to help you embed the Arts Award framework within your programme. All pupils will receive a free portfolio to complete and all costs associated with moderating your pupils for Arts Award will be covered.

The participating museums are:

• Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery
• Clitheroe Castle
• Gawthorpe Textile Collection and Hall, Padiham
• The Haworth Art Gallery, Accrington
• Helmshore Mills Textile Museum
• Towneley Hall, Burnley
• Turton Tower
• Queen Street Mill, Burnley

At a national level, the programme is also working in partnership with the Victoria & Albert and Sir John Soane museums and there are exciting opportunities for participating schools to connect with these venues as the programme develops.

If you would like to discuss the programme in more detail or have any questions, please get in touch with Gill Brailey, Cultural Services Learning Manager at Lancashire County Council on 07909001473 or gill.brailey@lancashire.gov.uk