Project :: Playground of the Imagination

Bradford

GOT BIG QUESTIONS ABOUT LEARNING? WANT TO SUPPORT TEACHERS, YOUNG PEOPLE AND CREATIVE PRACTITONERS WITH SOME OF THEIR BIG QUESTIONS? YOU NEED TO JOIN THE CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS CREATIVE AGENT TEAM IN WEST YORKSHIRE.

Following the recent confirmation of national funding for Creative Partnerships to 2011 by the Department for Culture Media and Sport and the Department for Children Schools and Families, we're delighted to announce recruitment of Creative Agents to the new West Yorkshire enquiry school programme which starts in September 2008.

Our aims remain the same, to develop:
• the creativity and enterprise of young people, raising their aspirations and achievements
• the skills of teachers and their ability to work with creative practitioners
• schools' approaches to culture, creativity and partnership working; and
• the skills, capacity and sustainability of the creative industries and other partners who wish to work with schools.

Our Values:
Question: We challenge and relish being challenged, experimenting to find unexpected solutions;
Connect: We encourage a brave approach to collaboration and are relentlessly partnership spirited;
Imagine: We believe that the development of the individual imagination is a fundamental human right;
Reflect: We invest energy to ensure that learning never stops, so that creative experiences result in change with lasting, sustainable impact.

Interested? We're inviting expressions of interest now from creative and cultural organisations based in Bradford, Calderdale, Leeds and Wakefield. The 20 Enquiry Schools will engage in a three-term creative learning programme targeted at a specific group of pupils and teachers. As an Enquiry School Creative Agent you will be assigned 6 days per school (including networking and team training / development activity). We need agents who can take on up to 5 Enquiry schools (i.e. upto 30 days per year). The Creative Agent role is a professional development opportunity for those wanting to develop in depth understanding of how schools work and how to broker meaningful partnerships between the creative and cultural sector and the world of education. We will work with you to ensure that we capture how this learning and development feeds back into the organisation. We need a named individual from within an organisation to commit to the role, Creative Partnerships West Yorkshire will pay the organisation up to 200 pounds per day to cover the costs of releasing this member of staff.

Schools are diverse and complex organisations; some of our schools want to address enquiries related to specific communities or cultures; all of them will interpret creativity slightly differently and will need access to a broad range of practitioners - this is not just about culture in the Western context nor is it simply about the Arts. As such we need to ensure that our Agent team is diverse in every sense - we are particularly interested in receiving expressions of interests from organisations who work with BME communities as this expertise is underrepresented in our current team.

An existing team of Agents are in place to work on the Change Schools programme which will enable 22 schools in areas with significant challenges to engage in an intensive three-year programme that supports the creative development of the whole school. There may also be opportunities to work with Change Schools as we develop the programme in West Yorkshire.

If you are interested then please send a CV for the named individual who would take on the Creative Agent role on behalf of your organisation and an expression of interest (maximum 500 words) stating why the organisation (and the named individual) is interested in the role. Your expression of interest should also evidence how your skills and experience match those outlined in the Creative Agent Service Specification (attached). Please send this information (preferably electronically) by 5 pm on Friday 11 July to: madeleine@capeuk.org / Host Media, 21 Saville Mount, Leeds LS7 3HZ

Related Documents
Creative Agent Service Specification
Enquiry Schools FAQs

Interviews for shortlisted applicants will take place in Leeds on 24 and 25 July. Successful applicants will be required to attend a Creative Partnerships West Yorkshire induction event on 11 September 2008.