Case Studies

About This Case Study:

As part of The City Classroom's Recovery Programme, in 2020 we piloted the development of an Artist – School Peer Mentoring Programme. The programme aimed to explore how artists can work with teachers and schools to support the immediate challenges being faced due to COVID.

The programme supported an artist to work with a school, offering a different perspective, to help wrestle with the daily challenges of working safely, managing socially distanced relationships, nurturing a positive learning environment and supporting the school community to develop its resilience.

The Artist – School Peer Mentoring Programme enabled a school to access 10 hours of an artist's time to support incremental changes across the school. These could have be identified through joining conversations with the Senior Leadership team, wellbeing and/or subject areas leads; attending staff meetings; or engaging with the school council, Governors or the PTA. Result may have seen whole school schemes of work, more playful playtime, or simply identifying creative ways to welcome the children at the start of each day. There was a focus is on knowledge between the artist and school as a means to open up school processes to inform thinking and shape the conversation. There were no prescribed outputs as the aim of the programme was to work collaboratively across a school to find creative solutions to the multiple challenges thrown up by the current and ongoing crisis.

The Artist – School Peer Mentoring Programme was open to all City Classroom member schools and/or those schools engaged in the Pathways Programme.

The programme was generously funded with investment from the Pathways Programme, through the University of Leicester, De Montfort University and Loughborough University and is part of a wider Creative Recovery Programme which has been designed to place wellbeing central to children's learning.

Follow the below link to more details about our Recovery Programme, plus reviews and responses to this programme from the partnership work carried out by Louise Katerega and Ash Field Academy, demonstrating the impact and possibilities which stemmed from the partnerships.

https://www.cityclassroom.org/school-recovery

1. Ash Field Review – Teacher Reflections & Impact on School
2. Distance Travelled – Commentary on a Plan by Louise Katerega. A possible framework for this specific model of partnership working.

"This project is probably – on the surface - one of the most time-limited and yet the most satisfying I have ever been involved with. And what continues to strike me is how economical it was on time, money and practical effort." Louise Katerega