Day to Create: The Art House and Lawefield Primary School

We’re excited to help celebrate 20 years of Artsmark on this year’s Day to Create. We’re taking a moment to reflect on the in-depth work we have done over the past year with Lawefield Primary School and look forward to our ongoing partnership.

Day to Create is a special Artsmark community day designed to support and celebrate children and young people’s ideas, imagination, and creativity through whole-school arts activity. We, like Artsmark, recognise the significant impact that valued creativity in education can have on young people. It’s a belief that led us to ‘adopt’ Lawefield Primary in 2021 to support their progressive arts curriculum, where children develop the skills and knowledge needed to become creative thinkers in all areas of life.

Our partnership with the school, initiated by abstract painter and art teacher Jan Parsons, allows children an experience of art making that they cannot access at school, as well as educating them in a range of creative disciplines and career options.

The pupils are able to visit The Art House and take part in workshops that explore mediums such as ceramics, printmaking, photography, and more. This access to our maker spaces in an ongoing relationship gives children the tools and time to really advance their skills in specialist techniques and explore their creative potential with the assistance of our expert teaching artists.

Not to mention the fun that we have together in the workshops! Jan commented on the children’s feedback on their time spent at The Art House, noting “Whenever I see any of the children in the corridor, they’re saying ‘when are we going to The Art House again?”.

A year on since our partnership began, we are proud to host regular workshops for multiple year groups from Lawefield Primary School. The children and teachers have become part of The Art House family, something we hope will continue as they move on to secondary education and beyond.

Our CEO, Sydney Thornbury, shares her thoughts on the partnership:

“Children have a wonderful way of reminding you of the right way to do things.

Watching the kids from Lawefield Lane immerse themselves (sometimes literally!) in their pottery making has been a wonderful lesson in how to give yourself over to your creativity. When you give children the opportunity to come and work in a professional arts environment with practising artists, you’re completely validating what, of course, they already know – that they are innately creative. This is important, because we need to keep that fire of creative thinking alive in them.

We know that creative thinking is not only necessary for being an artist, but for problem solving, innovation and even enhanced employment prospects in the future.  And let’s not forget, it also happens to be a lot of fun. Another thing that the Lawefield Lane kids reminded us of.

Thank you Lawefield Lane, for all your inspiration!”

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