Arts organisation launches new strategy to support early years settings
Katy Morton
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Earlyarts, the national network for people working creatively with children and families, has launched a new national strategy to help practitioners nurture young children's creativity.
The Earlyarts National Strategy for Effective Practice has been developed to meet new demands following recent policy reviews, including the revised EYFS, funding cuts and changing roles and responsibilities.
It aims to support a new way of working to enable children’s creativity, focusing on six key areas:
- training and continued professional development;
- creative and cultural experience: concerned with giving practitioners access to powerful creative and cultural experiences which they can feed back to children;
- professional partnerships: providing opportunities for collaboration between artists and practitioners;
- research and evidence: giving practitioners relevant research on how creative approaches can benefit children to relay to management;
- creative leadership: enabling staff to be more creative and have the confidence to effective in practice;
- learning environment: the recommendation of high quality materials to develop children’s outcomes.
To help deliver the strategy, Earlyarts is launching a new affiliates’ programme which will enable members to apply to become recommended suppliers of creative early years training or resources for the sector.
The national network has also introduced new services including a quarterly e-bulletin and weekly newsflash highlighting the latest research and evidence of creative interventions, a director’s blog with news, opinion and commentary and an online map showing arts, cultural events and training.
Ruth Churchill Dower, (pictured), director of Earlyarts, said, ‘As a social enterprise, Earlyarts has always been committed to finding more efficient and innovative ways to support partnerships across the early years, arts and cultural sectors.
‘As all the recent changes begin to settle, we believe it's time to renew our hunger for quality in creative early years practice, so that our children have the best possible start in life. We know that creative environments can often be the key to unlocking their potential, and it’s the same for the adults who care for young children.’
