Pupils and staff at The Nottingham Emmanuel School are celebrating after receiving a prestigious Artsmark GOLD Award in a momentous year for the programme as it celebrates 20 years of arts, culture and creativity in schools.
The Artsmark Award is the only creative quality standard for schools, accredited by Arts Council England. It supports schools to develop and celebrate arts and cultural education, putting creativity and wellbeing at the heart of the curriculum. Artsmark ensures every young person can be creative and access a diverse, high-quality cultural education.
In order to achieve their Artsmark Award, The Nottingham Emmanuel School had to develop their arts and culture provision to embed a broad and ambitious curriculum. This was achieved by creating an overall plan that was committed to and delivered across the whole school.
The Nottingham Emmanuel School was supported by The Mighty Creatives in planning and developing their objectives. The Mighty Creatives worked alongside the school at various stages to support their Artsmark Award achievement.
The school’s Statement of Commitment and Statement of Impact was assessed and the following feedback was shared:
“Even though you have experienced some changes in leadership during your Artsmark journey and the problems caused by the Covid pandemic, you have not lost sight of the value of the Arts. Your strategic approach to seize opportunities with national organisations and LCEPs is supporting you in your arts offer. Year 7 students are now offered a wider enrichment programme on Thursday afternoons, a governor for the Arts, (who is also the Head of Music) has been appointed and a number of themed days are offered to students during the course of the year. Your collaboration with the Nottingham Music Education Hub (NMEH) is having a positive impact on students, especially the Pupil Premium group with 52% (29% pre-Covid) of music lessons now being taken up by this group of students. Your work with NT Connexions and NottsAlone are providing a number of occasions for students to experience performing, cast members are so enthused that they are acting as recruitment ambassadors to engage more students for future productions. Celebrating diversity and students’ heritage is a strength and the Arts are used to help students understand themselves and express their views on issues that are important to them. The Diversity Day supported by student leaders helped students explore their diverse backgrounds, showcase singing, dancing, and wearing clothes that represented their language, heritage and country. Staff are confident to make links between the Arts and other areas of learning for instance using the grass amphitheatre. Artsmark has led to new collaborations between departments within the school such as the History and Art Department visiting Lakeside Art Centre to understand how photography was used in propaganda by the Nazis and, beyond school with the Heads of Music and Drama working with the seven schools in the trust to bring about greater convergence in the teaching of music and drama.”
Dr Darren Henley CBE, Chief Executive of the Arts Council, said:
“I would like to congratulate The Nottingham Emmanuel School. Becoming an Artsmark school demonstrates that through offering a broad, ambitious, and creative curriculum, every pupil can develop character and resilience, increasing their knowledge, curiosity and skills that will remain with them through to adult life.”