Our museums and galleries house fascinating collections, from living bugs to The Beatles, fine art to photography, the Titanic to ancient Egypt.
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Our museums and galleries house fascinating collections, from living bugs to The Beatles, fine art to photography, the Titanic to ancient Egypt.
Find Your Talent
We talked to reception teacher Carmel Fogg, Millbrook Primary School in Kirkby, about her role as a Find Your Talent Co-ordinator within her school.
What did being part of Find Your Talent really mean for schools?
FYT enriched our school life, cultural and artistically. It worked with our whole school from the foundation stage through to KS2 which has been really positive.
How involvement with FYT has personally benefitted you?
In addition to CPD sessions, it enabled me to build a better understanding of and relationships with people in cultural organisations. My knowledge of this area is much better than it was and will be useful in the future.
How have you found the role of FYT coordinator for your school?
The staff at my school have all been very keen to be involved, and help from the school secretary has been vital as she has been able to act as a liaison between all the teachers at Millbrook. The great thing about Find Your Talent projects is that they are more than a day out as all projects also include work in school.
What challenges have arisen, or needed to be overcome?
Initially getting everyone on board took a bit of time. Once involved people can see the value of it.
What is your view of cultural provision in schools in general?
I think it is getting better as it is now both a national and local priority. At Millbrook it is a target for our school.
What's would you like to see happen next?
I would like to see the work that we have done over the past 2 years through FYT developed not lost. I also think there needs to be central point of contact for cultural organisations (as there has been thorough FYT) as this make finding out about what’s on and opportunities so much easier for me as a teacher.
We also asked Carmel about the projects that the school had taken part in so far and what they got out of them:
Ancient Egyptian Adventure: This has been a fantastic project, the day of workshops and performance in school enabled parents to come in and see what work the children had done, this engagement of parents is really important for our school.
A Suitcase Full of Stories, Early Years CPD: I went along to some really good early years CPD (Contiuous Professional Development) with an artist called Sarah Argent around developing speaking and listening skills in very young children through story making and storytelling. I have been able to use what I learned to develop work that I do around the parent’s literacy course that I run in school.
Merseyside Sings: Our year 6 class if taking part in this FYT project which is going well, it is also going to scaffold down to year 3 as some of the year 6 pupils are going to lead singing classed with year 3.
Great Expectations: A class took a trip to The Philharmonic to see a performance that explored music and movement, my reception class took a trip to World Museum to explore Ancient Egypt through Amenys Adventure, through this they got to handle artefacts and learn loads from the staff at the museum. A class from our school also came to the Walker to take part in a Portrait detective workshop.
Where History and Imagination Come Together: We worked with the Bluecoat to develop this project which included workshops in school and at the Bluecoat. Through these we helped the Bluecoat develop a educational resource, 'Explore', that can be used by families or a schools visiting the Bluecoat.
Find Your Talent school coordinators work closely with the Find Your Talent area coordinators in each borough. Contact them here.