Creative Freedom

Creative Freedom - Newcastle Academy & Kat Hughes. Credit Jenny Harper

What is this project about?
Creative Freedom offers creative and cultural opportunities to schools in Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire by facilitating a long-term artist-in-residence-style programme within up to 10 schools. Each school will have up to 10 days of contact time with a creative partner, collaborating with the same group and co-planning activities with teaching staff. The programme is structured as an enquiry-style approach, providing schools with the opportunity to creatively explore challenges within their setting. It presents an opportunity for schools to collaborate long-term with local artists or creative practitioners to deliver engaging creative activities within their educational environment.

What difference does the project make?
Key issues identified by schools include well-being, confidence-building, communication skills, physical/haptic skills, and collaborative work. Through the programme, schools and their creative partners will collaboratively address challenges creatively, fostering a culture of creativity, amplifying youth voices, and embracing creativity and culture within the educational landscape

What can Creative Freedom do for your school?

This project is an opportunity for you to put creativity at the heart of your classroom.

Would you like to change something in your classroom?
Would you like to work with an artist/creative practitioner on a long-term basis?
Build stronger links with creative industries locally?
Embrace creativity and culture?
Empower and unleash confidence and creativity in your young people?
Amplify youth voice/engage hard to reach students?

Download our information pack to find out more

project spotlight:
Creative clay spaces

Classrooms at Carmountside Primary School became creative clay spaces where pupils were encouraged to explore and see process as an important feature, where difficulties or ‘fails’ were a positive in learning and understanding design and material.

The students working with artist Sally Fitchard experienced: Excitement, Novelty, Freedom, Physicality, Expression, Autonomy, Frustration, Confidence, Social Skills & Collaboration (pairs & group working), Curiosity.

The greatest impact was the level of confidence that grew amongst the pupils. It was commonplace, in the beginning, to ask permission to do something, this receded until no one ever asked. They enjoyed making, they enjoyed creating with clay and cardboard, they enjoyed the physicality and autonomy (with some useful frameworks) to explore for themselves.

project spotlight:
audible academy

Students at Newcastle Academy worked with Drama Practitioner Kat Hughes on a series of radio plays and dramatic stories.

The school had engaged with us because they were keen for their students to experience wider cultural activities and grow the drama department. Initially the students were reluctant to engage with the activity - getting up to sing, dance or act was seen as something uncool or uncomfortable.

Through Kat’s methodology different roles were found for different students depending where their interests lay - planning, speaking, budgeting, equipment and sound recording etc.

By the end of the project it became apparent that they young people were desperate to perform - to sing and dance! The project culminated in a trip to the Mitchell Arts Centre in Hanley where the students along with Kat, the MAC’s choreographer and a pianist took over the main theatre space for the day. The students took part in different activities all ably abetted by their own “sound and vision team”.

The students confidence went through the roof - they went from arms crossed to cartwheels on a stage in Hanley!