The Specialist Leaders in Cultural Education (SLICE®) fellowship is a one-year professional development programme for school leaders.

SLiCE® is authored and managed by Curious Minds. It is designed to equip influential education professionals with the requisite skills, knowledge and connections to become powerful advocates and expert commissioners for cultural education within their own school, and across a wider group of schools, such as a multi-academy trust or local area network.
On completion of the fellowship programme, SLiCE® designates are deployed to support curriculum development and improve commissioning practice across the education and cultural sectors, including playing an influential role within place-based partnerships such as LCEPs.

Since 2012 over 120 middle and senior school leaders have completed the SLiCE Fellowship Programme, drawn from range of settings: early years, primary, secondary, special education and sixth-form colleges. If you are interested in getting involved please email emma.bush@curiousminds.org.uk.

SLiCE® Research

Specialist Leaders in Cultural Education
2018-19: Wellbeing and Early Years
This report brings together the findings from the five SLiCE research projects that were run specifically in Early Years settings from 2018-2019, addressing an overall enquiry question:

“What role could cultural organisations have in supporting schools to think differently about arts, creativity, and cultural education underpinning the relationships between wellbeing and literacy in the early years?”

Manchester Metropolitan University was commissioned by Curious Minds to support the research aspect of the projects.
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2017-18: Inclusion
Through the 2017-18 academic year, SLiCE® fellows' research looked at how cultural education can deliver the Inclusion Agenda.

SLICE® Fellow, Louise Aylward's report considers "How can we promote educational and cultural encounters that truly value diverse bodies and minds?"

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British Values Publication Front Cover
2016-17: British Values - Beyond Box Ticking
This document features 13 case studies adapted from the research of our SLiCE® fellows in 2016-17, and offers the perspective of a cultural organisation who hosted three of these fellows. It focuses on how cultural education can deliver the British Values (BV) agenda, which schools are required to deliver under Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural education.

These case studies - from SEN, primary and secondary schools - feature a range of art forms and look at different aspects of BV. They are presented in a concise and visually appealing format to give schools great ideas about how they could deliver this work.

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Cultural Partner Perspectives

“How far and in what ways can you evidence the impact on your organisation of working with a SLiCE® fellow and their teaching school alliance?”

At the end of each programme year, we ask Cultural Partners to reflect on their year with a SLiCE® fellow and submit a case study. Below are a selection of Cultural Partner case studies.

SLiCE® stories from our Blog