Artsmark Gold Award
Lansdowne Primary Academy are incredibly proud to receive a prestigious Artsmark Gold Award [2023]. The Artsmark Award is the only creative quality standard for schools, accredited by Arts Council England. It has been supporting schools to develop and celebrate arts and cultural education for 20 years, putting creativity and wellbeing at the heart of the curriculum. Artsmark ensures every young person can be creative and access a diverse, high-quality cultural education. In order to achieve their Artsmark Award, Lansdowne Primary Academy had to develop their arts and culture provision to embed a broad and ambitious curriculum. This was achieved by creating an overall plan that was committed to and delivered across the whole school.
In their awarding statement, the Arts Council said:
"Lansdowne Primary Academy has developed an impressive creative curriculum provision, using the arts to engage children in wider learning and to foster children’s personal development. Collaborating with a wide range of arts providers, you have enhanced staff skills and confidence and enriched the children’s cultural capital. Your Cultural Partnership Leader has put her ‘Leaders for Impact’ training into practice, forging new cultural collaborations. Your pedagogy has been influenced by the work of Lucas and Claxton and creativity is now very strongly embedded in your teaching practice, further supported by the introduction of peer coaching. You have recognised the importance of children’s agency in their learning and have adjusted your offer in response to the views of your children’s Arts Council. This agency extends to all children in the range of collaborations with arts organisations such as the Royal Opera House, RSC, English Touring Opera, the National Theatre and others. It is impressive that you are embedding these experiences within the curriculum and seeing the benefits of connecting the arts to learning across the curriculum. You can evidence the impact of drama experiences and drama processes on the quality of writing, notably with disadvantaged boys. Your ‘All different: All Equal’ projects have led to a review of reading texts to reflect and celebrate diversity and you have seen a strong improvement in reading outcomes. Your ‘All Telling Our Story’ project gave pupils the opportunity to use their creativity to explore and give voice to the stories of migrants, captured in the children’s writing of a song performed at a community Windrush 75 event. Creative days in the community, collaborating with other schools, have further enhanced your presence in the community and you have developed parental engagement through workshops and performances. Your commitment to using the arts as a vehicle to drive empathy, equality and diversity is powerful and admirable."