Pupils rewarded for school design.

120 pupils at Woodhouse Primary Academy in Quinton, Birmingham aged between 9 and 11 have been recognised with Arts Awards for their contributions to a year-long project to design and make a set of large scale mosaics for their playground which now proudly greet visitors and pupils as they arrive.

Arts Award inspires young people to grow their arts and leadership talents and offers young people an inspiring arts journey. Supported by Arts Connect to create their Arts Award portfolios and with artist Hilary Baker, all the pupils contributed to designs, preparing the tiles and learning new skills to work on the details of each of the mosaics.

Each of the mosaics represented the school house groups, Inspire, Believe, Achieve, and Dream. The pupils took part in practical sessions to design and make the mosaics, trips to Bewdley Museum and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery linking the project to every part of the curriculum and involving pupils, teachers and parents.

Janette Bushall, Arts Award Advisor supporting the project said: “This is the first time I have seen Arts Award introduced as part of such an ambitious project involving everyone in the school! The pupils were really keen to create their portfolios to showcase what they had achieved during the project and the teachers ran with the ideas to inspire poetry, history topics, field visits and produced some wonderful artwork. Congratulations to all the pupils who achieved their Arts Award Explore and Discover Certificates.”

Hilary Baker, artist, said: “The pupils have engaged with every stage of the project from understanding the craftsmanship of creating the mosaic tiles to working together to develop the designs for the final mosaics. It has been wonderful to see the project, and their confidence in their skills, grow over the last twelve months. Their Arts Award success is hugely deserved.”

Pam Willetts, Head teacher, Woodhouse Primary Academy said: “As an Academy we are committed to developing the whole child and wish to promote success in all aspects of learning to inspire our young people and enable them to broaden their horizons. We are extremely proud of the children’s achievements and held a special assembly to officially open our school mosaic and also celebrate the children’s success. Woodhouse became an ECMAT Academy on 2013 and is committed to the children entrusted to our care. We are extremely proud of this achievement for both the individuals and the Academy as a whole.”

Liz Dix, Director of Academies, Education Central Multi Academy Trust said: “It was wonderful to see so many young people from Woodhouse Primary Academy, part of the ECMAT trust, proudly collecting their Arts Award Certificates. Just as excitingly however, after looking around the school as well as now in the playground, it was obvious that the Arts is an integral part of their exciting curriculum.”

Woodhouse Primary Academy is part of the Education Central Multi Academy Trust. Operating as a Trust, Education Central Multi Academy Trust have eight schools within the Trust already converted to academies and two more schools converting during 2014.

Arts Award is managed by Trinity College London in Association with Arts Council England working, in the West Midlands with Arts Connect. For further information visit www.artsconnectwm.co.uk.