Celebrating achieving Artsmark Gold Award

We are delighted to announce that St Philip’s School has been awarded the Artsmark Gold Award. The award recognises the school’s commitment to embedding arts culture and creativity across the whole school and is a significant achievement.

Artsmark is the only creative quality standard for schools, accredited by Arts Council England and the Gold Award is the highest award that schools can obtain.

Tom Underwood, Head of the Arts said, “We are absolutely delighted to receive the Artsmark Gold Award. The process has taken about three years and it formerly recognises all of the work that has gone on into embedding the arts, culture and creativity across the curriculum.”

We received some fantastic feedback from the Artsmark Assessors which you can read below:

St Philip’s clearly values the role the arts play in your pupils’ development and in the life of your community.

You have strengthened your engagement of families in the arts through improved communication about your arts offer and through increased showcasing of your pupils’ art and music. You have signposted creative and cultural learning opportunities that are available through arts and cultural organisations, including theatre companies, art galleries and museums that do relaxed and free performances.

You have developed your cultural collaborations, extending the range of trips to performances and galleries, including accessing artists with learning disabilities who model creative possibilities for your pupils.

CPD has supported your arts leads, developing story telling through work with the National Theatre and the Unicorn Theatre that has been cascaded to staff and incorporated into curriculum planning. CPD at the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy focused on diversity has supported your work to diversify the art curriculum.

Your commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion has seen your school became a signatory of the Cultural Inclusion Manifesto and your Head of the Arts has become a lead organiser of the 2024 conference. The Head of Arts has also contributed strongly to the I Am Network of SEN arts teachers and is a member of the I Am Festival planning team.

Opportunities for performance and for showcasing a range of children and young people’s work in the arts are developing and it will be good to see these continuing to grow.

You recognise the contribution the arts can make to mental health and it will be valuable to pursue your plans for ‘social prescribing’ of the arts.

You can now develop your Curriculum Design and Range of Offer further and harness the energy and agency of your Children and Young People by expanding and responding to pupil voice and by further enhancing their ownership of their engagement and personal progression within the arts.

We look forward greatly to hearing where your next journey takes you!