Projects
Creative Partnership Project
Pupils at Buttsbury Infant School were able to let their imaginations run riot during a project with Creative Partnerships during the Spring 2011 term. The aim of Creative Partnership is to bring creative workers such as artists, architects and scientists into schools to work with teachers to inspire children and help them learn. Creative Partnerships has worked in the past with a number of different schools within the Billericay Community Trust. This year, Buttsbury Infant School decided to focus their Creative Partnership project on writing.
The Creative Partnership team, including the poet Joseph Coelho, delivered an exciting project. In a school assembly, children saw a mysterious lady appear over the top of the piano, but were surprised that their teachers acted as if no-one was there. Back in class, the children tried to piece together clues as to the identity of the mysterious visitor. She later left a message for each class, asking them to design a home for her. Each class came up with a different theory of how her home might look. Staff, children and 71 parents worked in classes, with support from artist Donna Walker, to develop "immersive sets" where people could step (or crawl in some cases!) into a set space where emotions, ideas and memories were stimulated using sights, sounds and smells. The sets included a space rocket; a mountain cave; a sewer (complete with smells!); science lab; a mischief maker's land and more. Explore some of the sets in Gallery. In classes throughout the school, children were inspired to write an enormous variety of texts ranging from stories and poems to warning signs and labels. At the end of the project, parents were invited to tour the sets and the children voted for their favourite. The winner, pictured here, was the African jungle poacher's lair designed by Class 6. More details about the project can be found on Buttsbury Infant School's website
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