News / curriculArt Top of the Class
curriculArt Top of the Class
Monday 13th August 2007
An innovative on-line resource for primary school teachers providing art and craft ideas linked to every subject on the curriculum is to be unveiled in York this September at the forthcoming BA Festival of Science.
Time-saving, inventive, creative and instructional, the curriculART website will provide an invaluable tool for supporting cross-curricular teaching to primary school children.
The website is designed for teachers and offers a host of creative projects closely linked to the whole National Curriculum, supporting and assisting teachers to weave creativity into the fabric of the curriculum, encouraging them to seek creative opportunities in existing schemes of work and lesson plans.
The value of encouraging creative expression to enhance young people’s education has been emphasised in the latest Primary National Strategy. The report states that young people learn more easily and effectively when they are being creative. Creativity enables originality and encourages independent thinking and, for some children, offers the only space for individual vision and personal expression.
The award-winning business idea has been conceived by Gail Fox and Anne Hutchison who have worked in art education in primary schools across York for twenty years. Both are practising artists and educators with strong business backgrounds and their combined talents have been the foundation of a successful partnership for many years. Earlier this year the duo picked up the prestigious Merchant Adventurer’s Prize for Enterprise, awarded for innovation and entrepreneurial business ideas.
They are long-standing members of Creative York and have been working with Deborah Girdlestone, a Business Promoter at Science City York, to develop the business. Deborah says, "curriculArt is the first creative business to apply successfully for our Proof of Concept Fund and we were all impressed by their robust business model and the professionalism of the team. We are looking forward to their launch and helping them to grow the business over the coming months."
Gail and Anne are committed to increasing creativity across the curriculum and the current drive for cross curricular primary school teaching revealed a great opportunity to realise their vision.
Anne explains: ‘Each child should be encouraged to experiment creatively in his or her own way, so we have designed arts and crafts projects that will help every child to achieve a sense of success. We hope the projects included in curriculART will act as a catalyst for more ideas, and save huge amounts of time for teachers. There are many ways to do things and we hope teachers and children will find ways of their own which they will then share with us.’
Whilst developing curriculART as an on-line resource for teachers, Gail and Anne have deliberately avoided creating simply another computer-based learning tool for young people.
‘Instead of sitting behind a PC, the children have a fun opportunity for creative expression and to get their hands dirty’ says Gail.
Teachers and young people taking part in the schools programme of the BA Festival will be amongst the first to be introduced to curriculART as the team reveal two exciting science-based creative projects designed especially for the Festival.
Visitors to a special BA Festival Science City York marquee event in York city centre on 11 September will also be able to add their creative input to the projects, playing their part in building a stunning visual feature for the Festival.
The BA Festival of Science will be in York from 9-15 September, bringing over 350 of the UK’s top scientists and engineers to discuss the latest developments in science with the public. For more information, including an online programme, visit www.the-ba.net/festivalofscience.
