Find Your Voice Arts and Culture Enrichment in your School
By giving pupils the freedom to shape their own experiences through enrichment opportunities, we make learning richer and more meaningful. Our aim here is to give pupils space to think about what matters to them, express it creatively, and consider what they would like to explore in their learning. In doing so, we can help pupils value their voice and understand how they can use it to shape their lives and make a positive difference in their community.
Explore the following activities to:
Why choose activities from the Find Your Voice Pathway?
The ideas on this page are designed to help you think about how you can create an exciting enrichment offer in your school.
The ideas in this pathway help schools meet the DfE Enrichment Benchmark:
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An enrichment offer shaped by the school or college community
How might these activities be embedded into your enrichment offer?
In particular, the activities and approaches outlined on this journey are suited to:
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Regular meetings at lunch or after school provide time for arts councils to come together
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Smaller group activities within the curriculum
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Activities within or beyond the curriculum, led by visiting artist educators chosen by pupils
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Art weeks
Tips!
Whilst many pupils are very happy to talk about the things they care about, others need careful encouragement, and as the facilitator, you need to be prepared to handle content which might be generated.
Create more opportunities for pupils by choosing artists from diverse backgrounds, helping them see people they can relate to and discover a breadth of creative disciplines.
Help pupils explore what matters to them
Giving pupils opportunities to explore what matters to them helps them understand their values. This in turn can help young people develop a sense of self and feel part of something bigger. By sharing their values they can build a sense of community and see that others care about the same things.
Provide an opportunity for pupils to discover their values and place them at the centre of their work
When pupils put their own message at the centre of their learning, their creative journey becomes more personal and relevant. Knowing that there is no single way of thinking or doing in art gives them the confidence and freedom to explore their values.
Help pupils explore what matters to them, express who they are and imagine the world they want to live in with Find your Message to the World. Pupils use prompts and questions to develop ideas that challenge, provoke a response or communicate a powerful message through the projects below.
Making Propaganda Art Inspired by Shepard Fairey encourages pupils to express their hopes for the future by creating screenprinted posters that combine words and imagery.
Create Collaged Costume for Cardboard Figures to explore identity and self-expression through fashion. Pupils create characters that reflect how they want to be seen and how they choose to present themselves to the world.
Give pupils an opportunity to express their opinions with a Speech Bubble Challenge. Encourage them to consider how they communicate with others and what they want to say, while exploring different perspectives and the connection between who we are and what we say.
Resources
find your message to the world
Make Propaganda Art Inspired by Shepard Fairey
collaged costume for cardboard figures
speech bubble challenge
Give pupils opportunities to shape their own learning
Giving pupils opportunities to shape their learning might mean offering a choice of projects, disciplines, artists or techniques, and giving them the freedom to follow interests. Enrichment provides an excellent opportunity to do this, free from more rigid curriculum sessions with predefined objectives.
By creating space for pupils’ voices to be heard, we put them at the centre of their own learning. In practice, this might look like:
Create a platform for pupils voices to be heard
Setting up an Arts Council gives pupils the opportunity to represent and advocate for their peers, helping to decide which partnerships they would like to build or projects they would like to explore. Alongside this, suggestion boxes offer a simple way for all pupils to share their ideas and have a say in what they would like to do more of.
Offer a greater choice of artists and disciplines
Our Creative Community: A Pupil-led Project, gives pupils a choice of local artists, working across different disciplines, as a starting point for their project. From there, pupils help shape the direction of their learning by deciding who they would like to engage with and where that connection might take them.
Resources
Arts Council
Our Creative Community: A pupil-led Project
