PROJECTS | WHAT'S ON

July 2011
We are now finishing our eighth year as a specialist school in the Visual Arts, and our projects page will illustrate that it has been another busy and creative experience for all involved. Unfortunately, however in April the DESF gave schools the option to either continue using their specialism money on specialism work or divert it to be used for other projects. Some schools have opted to stop being a specialist school, but at Woodroffe, we are pleased to say we will still, be for the foreseeable future, a specialist school in the Visual Arts, however due to lack of clarity re the future of funding, we are unable to commit to projects that run over the annual budget for each individual year. Therefore it is with great regret that we have had to stop the GCSE Fast track Art group for our current year 7 but will be funding the yr 8 group (that will be yr 9 next year) to complete the course.
Other changes that have occurred this year due to the new financial structure are a cut back in our community work. Although we are still committed to community work, we will have a smaller allocation of time to do it and less funding to work with, so projects needing capital will have to have funding attached to them for us to consider engaging with.
We are however, deeply committed to our community work, and have been delighted to introduce a new strand this last month in which Alison Bowskill has been working in Old Folks Homes in the community alongside students working towards their Arts Award Bronze of Silver.
Working towards the Arts Award is a direction we hope will develop amongst the students to replace the GCSE fast track work. This award is similar to the Duke of Edinburgh scheme but for the Arts. Each award can be completed in one academic year and requires the students to develop motivational and organizational skills, running events out of school hours and working with other students in the community.
Already this year our silver award candidates have run a number of weekend workshops for children in the Philpott Museum, which have been a great success and the numbers taking part have been in their hundreds. Mary Godwin, the museum curator has been delighted with the collaboration as the workshops have opened up the doors of the museum to local youngsters and the idea of young people mentoring other youngsters is a scheme she fully endorses.
We have also worked with the education officer from the museum, Chris Andrews, to provide historical and geological lectures from which the students devised an animation film showing how fossils are formed and a shadow puppet film on marine life in Life Bay. The Arts award students also made a series of banners, all of which were funded by RELAYS and shown at the annual fossil festival.
Other work that Arts College has overseen and supported with photography, media and film expertise has been:
The school web site, the corporate identity of the school in its prospectus, prize giving programmes, report covers and general signage.
Puzzle day, Health Day, Enterprise day, Junior and Senior prize giving, Cabaret, We will rock you, work experience, general display round school and the annual exhibition in the Town Mill.
The Director of Art was also able to support ‘the help the Hub’ campaign with the world record breaking event on the cob and the successful phone in which resulted in the Hub wining £60,000 for a new roof.
We have continued to add sparkle and panache to the school site with our new ‘Food 4 thought’ mural which greets every driver as they swing into the school grounds and is a far more attractive welcome than the badly rusting disabled ramp which was quickly becoming an eye sore. The same artist Pete Sheridan has also finished off the tennis court wall mural which was halted before completion by rain at the end of last year’s summer term.
See the attached list of projects for further illustration on work completed this year.

D A Wood
Director of Arts