Great achievements – Autumn 2024 news update
Your support has enabled us to extend our work from 20 schools to over 40 this year and has impacted over 5,000 local children. By the end of this term we will be working in fifty schools and will reach over 6,000 children. Thank you!
We are very grateful for the support that you have already given Cotswolds Arts Through Schools! The impact on our school children is positive and inspiring. To find out more about what we’ve been achieving, please read on.
ART
All our schools receive art workshops each term from one of our brilliant talented, professional artists. These are hugely appreciated – the fun of working with charcoal or getting covered in clay or paint generates enthusiasm and excitement. Having fun while learning is part of what the arts bring to schools. However, we also back that up with regular support for teachers in class every week (using Kapow or Access Art) so that techniques learnt in our workshops are developed and applied in work throughout the year.
Our schools now have access to art materials, and their walls are being covered again with children’s artwork. Several schools have had help from our artists creating joint major art works which are on permanent display in the school and/or have been exhibited in local galleries.
SINGING
Last term 15 schools had ‘Opera in the Playground’ workshops where Longborough Festival Opera’s professionals perform alongside children to the rest of the school. Some 250 children performed and 2,500 watched the performance. We are supporting that with teacher training so teachers can support and develop children’s singing in schools.
We hosted a workshop for 25 teachers with Oxford Opera Company in October at the Kingham Lodge Pavilion to develop teaching techniques and confidence that will help their children sing. Several schools will have workshops from Oxford Opera this term – every child can sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, so every child could be a future opera singer!
In conjunction with Worcester College in Oxford, we are arranging a joint schools concert in Churchill Church next June. Come and see over 100 children sing their hearts out!
MUSIC
In our efforts to develop music we have been adding instruments: 15 schools have children learning ukuleles or ocarinas this term. More will start next term. These simple instruments can easily be taught by any teacher and are fun to learn. In succeeding terms, funds permitting, we will add more complicated instruments like recorders, keyboards and guitars.
Subject to meeting our autumn funding targets, we hope to add some outdoor percussion (as seen in some large gardens open to the public) for children to play in break time. All these basics introduce tunes, staves, rhythm and spark an interest in music.
The Chipping Norton Music Festival will give more performance opportunities for our schools and the new Chipping Norton Youth Choir is helping those enthusiastic to try choral singing.
DANCE
This autumn term we have facilitated 10 schools starting the Royal Ballet School’s ‘Primary Steps’ programme which lasts the whole school year. We are also hoping to facilitate school dance workshops devised in partnership with Chipping Norton Theatre.
DRAMA
Next term we will be delivering drama workshops in several primary schools developed specifically for primary children in conjunction with Chipping Norton Theatre. Some will be using pantomime techniques, building on the Theatre’s celebrated pantomimes. Others will focus on role play as a way of helping children with some of the mental health issues they face.
ARTS SCHOLARS TREASURE CHESTS
Several schools will have workshops coming up with the Art Scholar’s Treasure Chests. These allow children to handle a range of objects of historical significance – fossils, paintings, ceramics, silver etc. and learn about the history of them and their manufacture and significance.
SCULPTURE
The spring and summer terms will also see children working on sculptures for the Sculpture at Kingham Lodge show 2025 and then, funding permitting, attending the show in May, to see the work of professional sculptors and of other schools, alongside their own. We are grateful to the Cherwell Council and other private donors for pledges to help with the transport costs of bringing school children to the show.
With your support, we can expand children’s love for the arts and unlock a future generation’s creative potential.
