Making the most of your Arts Week

Many schools have an Arts Week – especially at the end of the summer term when the children are over-excited! How can you make the most of this time, and ensure that it isn’t just a ‘nice to have’ but has real impact on the creative and cultural learning of the children in your school?

We want to help you to make the most of your Arts Week, and have put together some ideas to support this. Read on for some hints, tips and ideas to help get the creative juices flowing!

Take a look at your library

Here at Arts Award, we absolutely consider literacy and books as art! And not just stories; picture books, illustrations, and comic books are wonderful art forms to explore. You could look at what is available in your school library, this support resource could help with your planning, or get in contact with your local library and see what support they could give you. You could also take a look at the Summer Reading Challenge 2022. Maybe your children could write a story, create their own illustrations for their favourite book, or create their own comic? 

Don’t forget digital

A week isn’t a huge amount of time to visit lots of arts organisations or experience a wide range of art forms. So let the internet take some of the strain! Google Arts and Culture lets you ‘visit’ galleries and museums around the world, and programmes such as the National Theatre Collection service means that full-length productions can be streamed into your classroom. Creative digital tools are also a great way to link your computing curriculum to an Arts Week. Could children use code to create geometric art? Or how about using a robot to create a piece of art, or digital tools to make music? We have lots of ideas on this blog – check out our posts on Mozfest or search for digital.

Supporters are there to help

Arts Award Supporters are arts and cultural organisations who have said that part of their work can support young people to achieve  Arts Award. But apart from this, these are all organisations who can work with young people to support their creative and cultural education. Use our Supporter Map to find out who is near you, and see what they may be able to do to add value to your Arts Week.

Showcase the talents of your pupils

Some of the children in your school may be budding musicians, actors, singers or artists themselves. Highlighting these children in assemblies, or even giving them the opportunity to go into different classes to talk about what they do, can be a great way to inspire other children to give something a go. The power of peer influence can’t be overstated, so if you have some great cultural champions in your school, use this opportunity to really let them shine! And the same goes for other members of staff – is there a musician or artists in the school who would like to share what they do? Seeing ‘real’ people engaging with the arts can be a great way to show that they can be for everyone.

These are just some ideas but we hope that they will help to make your Arts Week even more special. Get in touch if you would like any more ideas, or have a burning question about how to make the most of your Arts Week – and why not check out Arts Award Supporter to find local arts organisations who may be able to help you with your plans?