Year 2 of Welcoming the Stranger saw 3 new schools join the project: St Michaels Nursery and Infant School, Workington, Ewanrigg Junior School, Maryport and All Saints Primary School, Cockermouth.
The schools working on their second year of the project used the stories created during Year 1 as stimulus for creative arts sessions to develop empathy, curiosity, creativity and resilience in pupils. Schools chose how the project ran in their school, with some schools choosing to work with nurture groups, some continuing with whole school and others focussing on specific year groups.
Schools were also able to chose their focus in terms of art form. These varied between Drama, Shadow Puppetry, Visual Art, and Textiles. Some wonderful work was undertaken and many new stories developed by the children from characters in their original books.
The new schools followed the journey of our Year 1 programme, creating Bears story and then using textiles created story tents and banners inspired by their stories.
Meanwhile Seascale Primary continued to help us develop the project, piloting Year 3 and helping us to focus where the project is best placed. This supported us in adding Oracy as a focus to our Year 3 programme of work.
Welcoming the Stranger in Year 2 has worked with 8 schools across West Cumbria.
Welcoming The Stranger is a 3 year project funded by The Paul Hamlyn Arts based learning fund. The Laal Collective is working in partnership with Cumbria Development Education Centre and the teachers in the partner schools, to build children’s creativity, empathy, resilience and curiosity and to explore how the creative arts can support the delivery of the school curriculum.
