My #Artsmark20 story: Using Artsmark to build creative foundations in school

“A high quality cultural education should be a right, not a privilege.” Chair of Governors, David Whitehead says. This has been Bedford High’s mantra for transforming their own practice within the school and influencing the work of other settings throughout their seven-year Artsmark journey, and recently got awarded an Artsmark Platinum Award.

Bedford High School is a 11-16 high school based in Leigh, Greater Manchester, an ex-mining town with 37% of its cohort receiving pupil premium. Janet Madden, Head of Faculty and Director of Learning at Bedford High School explains…

We began our journey over seven years ago. I remember looking at framework and we were barely meeting the then Silver award criteria but we had a vision and it aligned with the Artsmark Platinum criteria so we used the framework to drive the changes we needed to make, to ensure creativity and culture was at the heart of everything we do. We are living prove that Artsmark Platinum can change the life of a school! Everywhere you go around our school you will see, feel creativity and hear lots of fantastic sounds or organised chaos as we call it!

Overcoming challenges

We have seen increased pressures in the curriculum especially since Progress 8 was introduced in 2016 but during this time Bedford Arts grew stronger, our subjects and offer grew and so did our staffing and student option numbers. Our Headteacher Mrs Phillips believed whole heartily in the power of the arts and how creativity in every classroom lead to ensuring students leave Bedford as well-rounded human beings who could participate successfully in society. During this time, we became an oversubscribed school and parent voice suggested this is due to our creative curriculum, our primary partnership work and the multitude of opportunities for all students. Our GCSE results also grew, with the Arts subjects working at, and even achieving above, national average GCSE results.

We were awarded Artsmark Gold in 2017 and in 2018 firmly set our goals on achieving Platinum. Our commitment laid out our pledge to become opinion forming, stretch our provision and make an even bigger difference at a regional and national level. During this time we led on many local, regional and national projects including our Head of Arts sitting on the LCEP steering board providing strategic educational collaboration and working towards a shared vision for cultural entitlement across the local area.

Developing partnerships

Our Arts Council students led on local and regional projects, we run Arts Award not only in our school but in our partner primary schools and our ‘Meet the Professionals’ creativity project is seen as a beacon of best practice and is used around the country by schools and LCEPs (check out our website for more details).

Becoming an Artsmark school has allowed us to achieve further local, regional and national success and recognition. We have partnerships with over 50 organisations and this is growing yearly. We were recently chosen as one of five schools in the country to run a National Theatre pilot project which we will launch and lead on this national campaign within the next three years. In order to contribute our voice to national initiatives and creative education, our staff and students are currently engaging with educational research with Goldsmiths University, University of Manchester and Edge Hill University. Finally, we will aim to protect our strategic vision for creativity from Covid-19 pressures and reductions in funding and to ensure our school leaders and stakeholders continue to uphold this vision.

Building strong foundations for pupils

No school ever stands still and Bedford High School is no exception. The school will continue to strive to ensure that its children and young people leave with the strongest foundation of values upon which to build a successful life and make a positive contribution to society. This is not the end of our Artsmark journey, we will continue to develop our methodology and evaluation of culture and creativity using the Artsmark framework and Arts Council’s quality principles to ensure our students and other students around the country have the highest quality of cultural education.