A creative curriculum emphasises the integration of creativity across all subjects and areas of learning. This approach encourages  children to engage actively with the material through exploration, experimentation, and creative expression, promoting deeper understanding and retention of knowledge. It is particularly relevant in the context of the Curriculum for Wales, which values flexibility, creativity, and holistic development in teaching and learning.

• Working on creative projects provides children with opportunities to work collaboratively. Research indicates that working in groups enhances creativity. Implement collaborative projects where students can share ideas and skills, allowing for a rich exchange of creativity.

 

• It encourages risk-taking and cultivate a classroom culture that values experimentation. Allow students to take risks without fear of failure, thus supporting creative thinking.

• It allows for integration of Arts, incorporating visual and performing arts into our curriculum can provide a vehicle for expressing ideas across subjects. This can make complex concepts more accessible and enjoyable to the children. 

• It encourages reflective practice and inscorporate reflection time where students can contemplate what creative strategies worked, what did not, and how they can approach problems differently in the future.

• It embraces the pupil voice. We regularly seek and incorporate the children’s feedback regarding their interests and preferred learning techniques to continuously evolve our creative curriculum effectively.

We believe that creativity is essential to the success and fulfilment of the children in Ysgol Acreair; that it is the basis of lifelong learning, and that this begins in our school.

We celebrate innovation and actively look for ways to ensure that our curriculum is full of ‘Magic Moments’ which motivate and engage the children.

We also seek to engage with professional inquiry to ensure that our pedagogy has the greatest possible impact on the progress made by pupils. 

On several occasions we have worked with the Arts Council of Wales who have supported us to work closely with Creative Agents and Practitioners to achieve this vision.  

We have included some of our favourite projects on this page for you to enjoy. 

Clay Kids- Cynefin

How can engagement with the arts support the development of pupil’s skills in language and literacy?

 

One particularly special project linked to our local area but was so successful that we were invited to the Tate London so share the children’s wonderful work. 

The aim of our project was to help children to develop skills in literacy, through their engagement with the arts.

We wanted to provide the children with opportunities to develop their spoken and written language in a meaningful and exciting way.

We chose the local area as a focus for our work and our teachers worked closely with Ben and Ed to explore the ways in which we could help the children to develop their literacy skills whilst also learning about this theme.

Whilst all of the adults had lots of good ideas, the children in Year 3 have played a huge role in ‘leading the learning’ throughout the project and the great success that we have seen has been a credit to their interest and engagement!

During the project the children have explored the local area, investigated the history of clay and brickworks and dug up their own clay which they have worked with during the art sessions. They have reflected upon what the area was like in the past and what it will become in the future- samples of all of the work that the children have created will be buried in a time-capsule during our celebration afternoon so that people in the future can find out more about what the local area is like now! Throughout our work in art and music  we have explored the ways that we can language to describe and explain what we have found out.

We hope that you enjoy sharing in the success of this project with us!

The Tate London

We were privileged to be invited by The Arts Council to showcase our work at the Tate gallery in London. We worked with Ben and Ed to create a new rap based on our journey down to London, and made clay sculptures.

Pump Milltir- Cynenfin

How can engagement with the Arts help us to engage with our Local Landscapes?

The theme of our project was ‘Pump Milltir- Five Miles’.

The stimulus for our project was Welsh artist, Janet Bell, who produced a beautiful collection of
paintings during the period of ‘lockdown’ during the pandemic. Each painting was done of
something on her daily walk and was of something within a five mile radius of her home on
Angelsey.
We appointed Jon Clayton, another artist, with whom we visited Dinas Bran castle in Llangollen.
From the top of the mountain, where the castle is located, we could see the incredible view over the five mile distance back to our school, with the town of Wrexham just beyond it.
We were fascinated to find out that Mr Clayton had also produced his own book during lockdown this consisted of his own paintings and poetry. We reflected on the different ways that people choose to express themselves, including at challenging times such as during the pandemic. For some people this could be through art or poetry, for others it may be completing a journal.
When our project got underway we covered a range of different Areas of Learning and Experience. Our primary focus was the development of skills in Expressive Arts with the children developing a wide range of different skills including sketching, painting and the combination of a range of mixed media to create their work during the sessions (the first of which took place from Dinas Bran Castle!).

The project also incorporated lots of other skills through including map reading skills as the children plotted out the 5 mile radius from our school and considered which the best places to visit would be
(Humanities). They also helped to plan the visit to the castle. The children went out into the local
area and photographed some of the parts of the local area which they saw as significant- for some of the children these were places of historical significance such as the aqueduct or the cenotaph, for others the places were sentimental and included favourite places of their families. One child photographed the house where their great grandparent had been born! This prompted lots of discussion about what makes a place significant and special to us.
They learned about the history of the castle and posed/investigated some of the landmarks that
they could see within the five mile radius of our school.

During the project we also read the story ‘The Quilt’ by Valeriane Leblond. This was not a planned part of the project but it was a wonderful opportunity to make links with some beautiful literature
which had some key messages out how the landscape and the area in which we are brought up
becomes an important part of us even when we move on to other places in our lives. This fitted
beautifully with our work on transition to high school.

Professional Inquiry

Many of the projects that we have been involved in have been beneficial in supporting teacher’s Professional Development and our understanding of effective pedagogy.

In the document below you can see some of the inquiries that we have undertaken relating to creativity within the curriculum.