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creative school communities

Creative School Communities 

Creative School Communities has been running since 1998, and is financially supported by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. The project, which currently involves eight local primary schools in Tower Hamlets and more than 2000 children, provides opportunities for schools to increase their creative offer across the whole school community. The project was devised to improve children's literacy and was later expanded to support teachers in delivering a creative curriculum and to include family learning with parental workshops and teachers' INSETs. Eastside has developed and delivered a range of popular and highly successful workshops in each of the participating schools with projects linking neighbouring primary schools with local secondary schools in order to incorporate a vital transitional element into the programme. Activities have included performance poetry workshops with spoken word artists, a dance programme to engage boys, photography and puppet making projects, creative aerobics both for children and their parents and storytelling workshops. Some schools used these workshops to attract parents that haven't previously engaged with the school; in other cases workshops were used as a way to increase the parents' own skills or to give them a forum to discuss their aspirations for their children. Parents recently created a wall hanging which captured their hopes and dreams for their children's futures. Teachers are also encouraged to take part in the workshops so that they can learn new skills as well as developing creative new approaches to teaching and learning.