Newcastle and Gateshead
The Newcastle and Gateshead Schools Linking Programme is led and facilitated by the Laing Art Gallery, for Newcastle City Council and the Shipley Art Gallery for Gateshead City Council. We launched the programme in the Summer Term 2018 with 14 classes engaging in a summer link funded by BSBT supported by The Linking Network and Newcastle City Council; Gateshead joined us a year later. There has been a lot of interest and the program has been well received with local schools. 2019-20’s project saw 6 Gateshead schools and 12 Newcastle schools linking both primary and secondary – engaging around 500 pupils!
Before meeting, the Laing and Shipley learning team would usually go into the linking schools to deliver assemblies; to talk about friendship, acceptance and making new friends, and and to introduce the project to the whole school. In the classroom classes have been taking part in activities that explore themes around identity and belonging, as well as exchanging postcards, letters and videos with their Linking partners.
For our 2019/20 project we started our neutral venue visits at the Laing and Shipley Art Galleries; taking part in circle games to get to know each other. This year our art activity was focussed on ‘Living Together’ and ‘Our Dream World’; pairs discussed their dream worlds and finding out all the wonderful things they had in common – they then designed and made their own dream world together. These worlds were then photographed and generated into postcards for the schools to send to each other and keep as a memento. Each group had a go at all of the art activities and all of the gallery games. Read more about Hadrian and Belford schools meeting for the first time
Take a look at these 3D maps, inspired by sense of place and imaginary worlds; we love what the children from Brighton Avenue Primary School and St Agnes Primary created together on their visit earlier this year!
After CPD, teachers felt prepared for linking and spoke of the positive effects of linking: “I think I do have a greater understanding of how to talk to children about controversial or sensitive topics especially through the use of the books or the resources through the website given” “… the children were first of all shy and apprehensive but very quickly became familiar with one another as the day progressed.”
We look forward to updating you on our progress in 2020-21!
Contact: Anne Fountain and Morgan Fail, Laing Gallery, Newcastle – lainglearning@twmuseums.org.uk
Take a look at our websites Laing Art Gallery , Laing Gallery Schools Projects and Shipley Art Gallery
Or follow us on Twitter @LaingArtGallery and @theshipley
