A Creative Learning Partnership Project with St Peter and Paul Primary School,

Burgh-le-Marsh, Lincolnshire. A three month project designed to motivate children in a practical and artistic way.

The main funding for the East Lindsey Creative Learning project at Burgh-le-Marsh St Peter and St Paul CE Primary School was provided by the DfES, Arts Council East Midlands, Lincolnshire School Improvement Service, Lincolnshire County Council and East Lindsey District Council.

The finished area.

The initial research question for the project was:

How can we use skills of creative practitioners to enthuse, motivate children, provide real, practical problem solving opportunities for able Year 5 pupils, help talented children to develop their artistic abilities and give pupils a forum to express their schools identity, in an outdoor environment, within an artistic context? 

The finished area can be seen  above, to the left the area at the start of the project. The following explains how the project developed, how the children were involved and problems overcome.

I would like to thank the pupils of the school, especially Year 5 who were the  focus of the project, Miss Smith the headteacher, Liz Rance and Katy Vine of CfBT, Mrs Horton (Year 5 teacher) who ably helped when my lack of teaching skills were evident, for all their enthusiasm and help which made the project a pleasure to be a part of.

To start the project Miss Smith and myself spent half an hour with each class in the school asking them for ideas for games and ideas based on mathematical sequences and naturally occurring phenomena.

We looked at what causes symmetry in snow flakes, but the main focus for mathematical sequence fell upon Fibonacci's Numbers. An element of enjoyment was introduced in the for of games to encourage the children to see the project through and play the game. To do this we discussed the components of a game and how these could be introduced to their ideas.

Dice and dominoes were used to explore these components because of their mathematical basis.

These are two examples of over 140 sketched ideas collected on the first day of the project, which represented input from almost every pupil present at the school that day.

For more examples: Click Here

Once the whole school had been involved in the project, the focus group of Year 5 spent the next four weeks incorporating as many of these ideas into their thinking and ideas for the project and the area. The class was developed into six groups as thoughts and ideas focused into certain fields. The groups looked at Mazes, tunnels, sport, arches, paths/dominoes and ADOS a miscellaneous group, the acronym comes from the first letter of each child's name!

Having developed their ideas on paper each group developed their ideas three dimensionally with modelling clay, and worked making some abstract concrete pictures using wooden rods for strength to look at reinforcing the work.

Mathematical calculation was incorporated with calculating the volumes of material required for each part of the project, the oval bas, the planters, the foundation etc..

Above is a diagram of the Arc including the buried supports. There is in fact more metal below ground than above ground.

The image above shows the site with the Arc concreted in position and the hardcore for the alphabet oval in place. The five circle are for the sense gardens.

The completed project