State of the arts
This publication is a key output of investment by Artswork, the Arts Council's bridge organiastion for S.E.England, part of the “Championing Cultural Capital: Senior Leaders Advocacy for Arts, Cultural and Creative Practice” project, led by Jez Bennett of The Leadership and Training Centre, Milton Keynes. Jez brought together a group of headteachers to reflect on the power and importance of arts and cultural education in their schools and documented their approaches. They share the view that children deserve a rich experience of the arts and culture, and that this experience is valuable both for its own aesthetic and for the personal development it encourages.
A key role of Artswork is to advocate for the value of arts and creativity to children and young people, and to facilitate the sharing of good practice in arts and cultural teaching and learning within and between schools. Artswork recognise that the most powerful advocacy for arts and creativity in schools is peer-to-peer. Therefore we have invested, across the South East, in opportunities for headteachers and senior leaders already convinced of the transformative power of the arts and creativity in schools to advocate in their own localities and beyond.