The Creative Arts

The creative arts are an important part of the Rushcombe curriculum because we believe that the opportunity to develop self-expression is a fundamental part of human experience.

Within each of our Learning Adventures, we aim to provide opportunities for children to express themselves through the arts – whether that’s through drawing, painting, sculpture, music, dance, drama or any other form of expression. Children develop skills, explore ideas, create their own art works and engage in reflection and evaluation of what they have produced. The school’s Learning Adventures provide a range of purposeful contexts for learning in the arts to take place.

The school’s approach to the arts is informed by the Reggio Emilia schools in Italy, where the child is conceptualised as an artist in their own right and is supported to develop their own art projects and expressions through co-constructive approaches. The founder of the Reggio Emilia schools, Loris Malaguzi believed that children have a multitude of ways in which they can express themselves and he encapsulated this belief within his poem ‘The Hundred Languages of Children’. At Rushcombe First School, we also believe passionately that children have many ways in which they can express themselves, (sometimes combining multiple forms of communication and media) and that we have a duty to enable them to explore these means of expression. This belief runs through our delivery of the creative arts, and is also central to our yearly Reggio inspired projects, in which children participate in studio work to develop individual or group expressions.

In addition, regular opportunities are provided for children to learn from a range of arts professionals, including practising artists, dancers, musicians, actors and drama facilitators (see Theatre in Education for further details). We believe that these opportunities play a valuable role in enriching the child’s experiences and enabling them to explore their creativity. We have worked with many wonderful artists over recent years to develop some truly spectacular projects. These have included our whole school puppet shows (developed with Creation Myth Puppets), in which all children in the school participate. As part of these projects, the children work with an artist to write and create a story and then make the puppets with which they perform. The result is a wonderful performance developed by all of the children, incorporating an important message about our world. Other arts projects have included working with an artist to create a large scale, interactive installation of an imagined island in the school hall and creating an outside, night time illuminated performance entitled ‘Delights of the Deep’ (in conjunction with the artist Sarah Butterworth). We believe that the arts are a vital part of human experience and therefore they are a vital part of the life of our school.