Artsmark Silver Award
The Gateway Primary Free School are incredibly proud to receive a prestigious Artsmark Silver Award [2023]. The Artsmark Award is the only creative quality standard for schools, accredited by Arts Council England. It has been supporting schools to develop and celebrate arts and cultural education for 20 years, putting creativity and wellbeing at the heart of the curriculum. Artsmark ensures every young person can be creative and access a diverse, high-quality cultural education. In order to achieve their Artsmark Award, the Gateway Primary Free School had to develop their arts and culture provision to embed a broad and ambitious curriculum. This was achieved by creating an overall plan that was committed to and delivered across the whole school.
In their awarding statement, the Arts Council said:
"Despite the challenges of Covid, you have shown resilience in keeping up with new offers of arts and creative opportunities that otherwise would very likely not have featured in the lives of many of your learners. Through your use of online technology during Covid, to post lockdown trips and projects with partners, you have maintained a range of stimulating arts-rich events, projects and workshops. Highlights have included the following: a performance of Hamlet by the National Theatre for local Thurrock primary schools from which GPFS created a writing scheme of work shared with all primary schools involved; a live event with The National Archives and children across the UK in order to celebrate Windrush 75 with Floella Benjamin; a horizon broadening trip to Borough Market, trying new foods from around the world; art and music leaders collaborating with other school leaders to plan cross-curricular projects such as the Kinetica T1OO festival; wider teacher CPD from a range of cultural partners, including ROH, National Theatre, Kit Theatre, and The Royal Shakespeare Company, developing creative approaches across the curriculum to support oracy. It sounds from your submission that your key ambition was to keep a rich, varied offer on the go despite the pressures of Covid to do less, and in that you definitely succeeded.
You are clearly a very committed school, and your new headteacher brings with them a wealth of experience from ROH CPD that can help to more deeply embed the values and vision that is so much a part of the special trips, projects and extra-curricular offers you make available."