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See the short film below

ART? WHAT’S THAT? WHO CARES?

Here at STEAM Co. we say that ‘Art is what we call it when what we do might connect us to someone else”.

One child’s art might be painting, another’s might be photography. Cooking or coding, fashion or football.

Whatever. It’s a passion that might just help them through school, work and life.

And this session is all about helping them find it and increasing life options.

Our Summer Tour brings exciting, inspiring and hands on talks and workshops into primary school communities and secondary transition.

Half or full day, it consists of an all school assembly and one or more hands on activity workshops.

It’s been put together to minimise effort to you and maximise inspiration, of children, teacher and the parents and other creative carers in your school community. Get them all in.

THE JOURNEY TO DATE

We kicked off in Newcastle, where we told the story of how a Geordie lad had saved his wages to learn to read before going on to help put a rocket under the first Industrial Revolution.

From there a keynote at a Literacy Conference in Oxford where we gave a member of the audience a copy of Rocket Boys who turned out to be a dad and head teacher who invited us into his school in Leicester where we went on BBC Radio Drivetime (listen here).

While there we were asked to go and speak at two conferences in Edinburgh so hit the road without a tooth brush or clean socks!

On the way up we connected on Twitter with a teacher, writer and actor who invited us to collaborate with him on his Edinburgh Fringe show ‘Teach’ and he then magically popped up on the car radio with James O’Brien (listen here)

That led to two fantastic sessions in Scottish Schools in the Sun and then back South to England’s rainy summer in Hartlepool and Teesside.

What a journey, be part of it. We still have slots available across the UK.

WHAT WILL Ofsted make of all this?

We’re sure they’ll love it.

With the new Ofsted framework on the horizon, many schools are looking closely at creativity and broadening their curriculum.

The STEAM approach and creativity can engage young people in their learning as well as be shown to provide career pathways and critical life skills. From the Department of Education to the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to Department of Department of Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy the government is firmly creativity and the arts.

Ofsted are also keen to get the whole school community involved. And that’s what we do.

Children love it. Teachers and parents love it. We’re sure Ofsted will too!

Book now

We’re a non-profit community enterprise and have to ask for donations to cover our costs of staging these sessions.

We request a donation of £300 for half day session (assembly/one activity) and £750 for full day (assembly/4 activities) and rocket.

We know school budgets are tighter than ever but the feedback we get is that it’s worth every penny. Many schools raise it from a whip round in their community, other get sponsors, some use Pupil Premium?

We’re trying to get sponsors centrally to pay for sessions in part or full. Let us know if you need help funding these days.

WHAT HAPPENS?

You pick a half or full day session, confirm a date and we’ll send you a flyer and a video you can email home to tell everyone, maybe request donations, raise some sponsorship and get parents and other carers to sign up o help out on the day,

We rock up with our Drop-Truck containing everything we need to run the session.

See the films at the bottom of the page to get a feel what these sessions look like.

All School Assembly

In this engaging, informative and inspiring 45 minute session for the whole school community we talk about art, what it is and why it’s important along. We look at the 21st Century Skills our kids will need to outpace the robots.

Workshops

Choose one workshop if you’re having a half day session or four or more if it’s going to be a whole day affair. You can timetable them for 45 minutes each or have a free flow day where children try whatever takes their fancy.

Workshops include:

• ROCKETS - In this activity, inspired by the true story in the ‘Rocket Boys’ book, every child gets the chance to make and fire a paper rocket 200 feet in the air. Always a real hit with the dads. Be sure to invite a few in!

• CODING - We need to show our children how to create computer games digital experiences and not just consume them. In this session they’ll learn how to code a £12 BBC Micro:bit and then start saving to buy one with some friends to code in the holidays.

• ROBOTS - If we’re going to beat them, we need to understand them and in this session the children get to see how robots work and have the chance to code a few to obey their every command including the amazing Lego Rubik’s Cube solving robot .

• ENGINEERING - A look at civil engineering and different types of structures. Children get the chance to make structures from paper straws and also roll newspapers up using the rolling machine into titanium strong rods.

• INVENTORS - Be inspired by Chief Little Inventor Dominic Wilcox to come up with your own zany invention idea to make the world a better place.

• UKULELE - We have 15 Ukes in our truck and if you have an instructor, or someone prepared to have a go, then add this activity to your day.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND READING

These sessions make for the best community engagement and a great chance to get parents in to school who might not normally do so.

The rocket activity is a particular hit with the dads and to build on this we have published a series of short ‘Rocket Kid Stories’ that dads, mums and any carer can read to the children at night to encourage a culture of reading together at home.

These stories were inspired by Homer Hickam’s amazing and true story as told in his ‘Rocket Boys’ book and the art, story and father hood of another famous Rocket Man - Elton John, both of whom feature in our all school assembly. See the film here that tells that story.

It goes a little something like this

Take a look at the films below of similar sessions