One of the key strategic areas for Forest this year is our journey towards achieving our Gold Artsmark Award. This is a prestigious award, overseen by the Arts Council of England, and is awarded to schools who demonstrate effective strategic planning and whole-school commitment to a high standard of artistic endeavours.
At Forest, our pupils benefit hugely from specialist teaching in Music and Drama, and so our Artsmark journey is particularly focused on Art & Design:
- ensuring that pupils’ progression is cohesive and demonstrates a range of quality opportunities,
- ensuring that our methods of tracking this progression are both effective and efficient,
- promoting Art & Design throughout the school community and involving all ‘stakeholders’ – pupils, parents, staff and wider community.
We are delighted by the response from pupils and are very happy to announce the formation of a new pupil-led Arts Council. One Upper School and one Lower School pupil were chosen from each house and, along with our Music Captain, have already had their first meeting and come up with some excellent ideas for The Arts at Forest.
We have also created a new Twitter account – @ForestPrepArts – so that all members of the school and the wider community can see how The Arts play a vital role in the development of our pupils.
Please do keep an eye out for the next stages of our journey, and encourage your children to take part in the activities on offer. We have a wealth of artistic talent at Forest and want all children to thrive.
Ms S Wellings
Director of Music & Artsmark Leader
