Welcome to our area targeted at arts organisations. We hope you have arrived on this page because you or your organisation are passionate about working the children and young people.
The county of Surrey has a rich cultural heritage and presents a wide range of opportunities to schools for high quality cultural and artistic engagement. Cultural resources and providers include Surrey Hills Arts, The Lightbox, Delight, Guildford Shakespeare Company, Strangeface Theatre Company; Surrey History Centre; Yvonne Arnaud Theatre; the four Surrey based Arts Council England (ACE) National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs): Farnham Maltings, New Adventures, Stopgap Dance Company and Watts Gallery Artists’ Village; heritage sites such as Brooklands Museum, and other local museums; Surrey County Council’s (SCC) network of 53 local libraries; Arts Partnership Surrey; venues such as GLive, The Electric Theatre and Dorking Halls; ACE Bridge organisation Artswork; SCC Surrey Arts, which is also the lead partner for Surrey Music Education Hub; the many small companies and individual practitioners based in Surrey delivering work across all artforms.
How to get involved
Wherever you fit into this context, if you want to further develop your work with schools here are some ideas about next steps:
Look at the case studies on this site for some examples of how arts providers are working with schools to deliver fantastic creative and learning opportunities.
Consider registering with Connecting with Culture – add your organisation’s details to the Connecting with Culture database, managed by Artswork. This online database will enable schools to become aware of your work.
Add your organisation to Surrey Culture on the Map – the Surrey Culture Map aims to connect creative individuals and organisations with others in the arts and cultural sector.
Go to the Resources area on this site for information about other cultural providers who have experience of working in Surrey schools.
Whether you already deliver work in schools, or seek to develop new programmes, consider reviewing and clarifying your aims and success criteria. For example do you want children/young people to engage with your artform because of it’s powerful intrinsic value? Or do you want to address particular broader issues such as mental health, low aspiration, anti-bullying? Or do you want to try and improve attainment in a core curriculum area like numeracy or literacy? Having clarified your aims, consider what outcomes you want. What will success look like and how will you measure it?
Identify which schools with whom you could collaborate. For example, what will be their context, primary, secondary, early years, special schools, pupil referral units? Will they have specialist units, for example for visual/hearing impairment, autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). Do they have higher numbers of Pupil or Service Premium pupils, or experience rural isolation? Could your programme extend to a cluster of schools and if so on what basis? For example, the cluster could be geographically based, comprising a secondary school and neighbouring feeder primary schools. Alternatively it could consist of schools that share a context, such as high Pupil Premium or Gypsy Roma Traveller (GRT) pupil numbers, or rural isolation.
Think about how your programme will be funded. School budgets are currently very challenged and you will almost certainly need to draw in external funding, possibly from several sources. Are there local philanthropic trusts who may be approachable? Are there other organisations you can partner with? Surrey CEP has successfully drawn in funding from Arts Council England (ACE) and other sources for programmes in our schools, but match funding is almost always required and most funding of this type is directed at collaborative school clusters not individual schools. It’s also worth noting that Artsmark registration and Arts Award development are usually both a requirement for ACE funding for schools. Visit the Surrey Culture website to see more funding sources.
Visit the Arts Partnership Surrey pages or follow Arts Partnership Surrey (APS) on Twitter for updates on opportunities and call-outs relating to upcoming APS projects. APS is a well established network led by representatives from many of the Surrey Districts and Boroughs.