We held our second meeting of our Arts and Education Advisory Group.
This large group will attempt to develop and drive our strategy for integrating the arts and education into a seamless whole which promotes engagement, quality of performance and links with the community from the age of 3-18.
Our intention is to allow our strategy to evolve – so we spent today brainstorming all of the various artistic and creative activities which take place in our communities for young people aged 3-18. What became apparent is that there are an enormous range of diverse activities in which young people can participate.
The however is that this range of activities is often – though not always – ad hoc and often lacking routes for progression either within the school system or into the community.
For our next meeting we intend to map these activities both in a matrix format and a more literal geographic format.
As we concluded – we are not starting from scratch but all too often new strategies ignore existing practice and opportunities. Using the grounded strategy approach we intend to build from where we are and begin to gradually fill in the gaps and develop links between the activities and opportunities which currently exist.
This is perhaps one where student voices could contribute by identifying opportunities to make connections, as they are the ones who have direct experience of both what happens in school and in community activities. Perhaps we could ask them?
The “however” that the group have highlighted about lack of routes for progression, might, for example, not be their biggest concern.
Some do not need the group to advise them on quality of performance, though, as this current example shows. (Declaration: I am a parent of one of them!)
David
We have students on this group.
Routes for progression are a concern but even of even more importance are the gaps in provision which we hope to identify and rectify.
We won’t be advising on quality of performance – I’m certainly not qualified to do that – however, we will be promoting quality of performance and as you point out we start from a very high base in many areas of the arts
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