{"id":315,"date":"2017-05-17T14:49:41","date_gmt":"2017-05-17T13:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/?p=315"},"modified":"2017-05-17T09:21:49","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T08:21:49","slug":"what-is-freedom-community-curriculum-making-seven-stories-and-mountfield-primary-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/what-is-freedom-community-curriculum-making-seven-stories-and-mountfield-primary-school\/","title":{"rendered":"What is freedom? Community Curriculum Making, Seven Stories and Mountfield Primary School"},"content":{"rendered":"

As <\/strong>Newcastle University\u2019s Research Centre for Learning and Teaching<\/strong><\/a> publish their Schools\u2019 and Partners\u2019 Guide to Community Curriculum Making Through Enquiry and Project Based Learning,<\/a> this post investigates a recent example of this research in practice. <\/strong>Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children\u2019s Books<\/strong><\/a> worked on an archive-based project in partnership with <\/strong>Mountfield Primary School<\/strong><\/a> in Newcastle using a drama and arts approach which explored the question: \u2018What is freedom?\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Professor David Leat<\/a> and Ulrike Thomas<\/a> describe enquiry and project based learning as an approach which \u201cencourages schools to use the resources for education that exist in their community and locality.\u201d <\/em>Engaging with the community \u201ctakes students to new places, allows them to meet new people… this gives them raw material from which to construct more positive identities, overcome stereotypes and prejudices and inform their aspirations.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

This research\u00a0aligns with Seven Stories’ approach to creative learning and engagement<\/a>\u00a0and their objective ‘to explore how to empower children to better shape their own worlds’<\/em>. It also has synergies with the ‘immersive curriculum’ that Mountfield Primary School are embedding<\/a>. Seven Stories introduced partners at Mountfield to the Centre for Learning and Teaching\u2019s work on Community Curriculum Making, and together they embarked on a new project exploring this framework.<\/p>\n

\"What
What is freedom? Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books, photography by Richard Kenworthy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The starting point for the project was an essential question that the children would explore: \u2018What is freedom?\u2019. The project built on Seven Stories\u2019 programme<\/a> of engagement around the Beverley Naidoo collection<\/a>, and framed the children as \u2018researchers in their own journey\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Year 6 class spent their first school term studying Beverley Naidoo\u2019s book, Journey to Jo\u2019burg,<\/em><\/a> which has been in print for 30 years and is represented within the Seven Stories Collection. The book was released during Apartheid and banned by the South African Government. It tells the story of black South African siblings, who risk an illegal, 250km journey to find their mother, a servant in a white household in Johannesburg, because their baby sister is gravely ill.<\/p>\n

The students, led by Seven Stories\u2019 Learning & Participation Manager Debbie Beeks<\/a>, explored the themes of the book through drama and writing, examined related items from our archive and enjoyed an opportunity to Skype with author Beverley.<\/p>\n

\"SevenSeven Stories Learning and Participation Manager Debbie Beeks. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books, photography by Richard Kenworthy<\/p>\n

The children made mining heritage connections between the North East\u2019s coalmining tradition and the goldmines of South Africa that feature in the story. They met Dave Temple, an ex-miner who led the South African miners\u2019 solidarity campaign with the National Union of Mineworkers<\/a>. This helped them to make connections between the local and global communities.<\/p>\n

The project culminated in the Year 6 children inviting Year 5 and Professor David Leat to visit their pop-up \u2018Museum of Freedom\u2019 in Seven Stories\u2019 Attic, which they curated themselves. The objects that they displayed in the Museum of Freedom were created using Seven Stories\u2019 Artefictions approach<\/a>, which sees the creation of artefacts from fiction, to tell the story in exhibition-form.<\/p>\n

\"Seven
Seven Stories’ Collections and Exhibitions Assistant, Danielle McAloon, shows the children items from the Beverley Naidoo Collection. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books, photography by Richard Kenworthy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cInteresting. It made me want to learn more.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>Year 6 student, Mountfield Primary School<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel proud, back then I wasn\u2019t that \u2018into it\u2019. Reading Journey to Jo\u2019burg got me into our project.\u201d <\/strong><\/em>Year 6 student, Mountfield Primary School<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Naidoo archive offers such rich and powerful source material for children to explore literary heritage and world history. It\u2019s vital that Seven Stories is able to open up the archive for children to make sense of the world and have ownership of their future narratives. It was a privilege to be part of this project and to research and learn alongside year 5 students and their class teacher at Mountfield.\u201d <\/em><\/strong>Debbie Beeks, Seven Stories<\/p>\n

\"Mountfield
Mountfield Primary School children with their Museum of Freedom. Image: Seven Stories, The National Centre for Children’s Books, photography by Richard Kenworthy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In evaluating the approach and impact of this project, Debbie Beeks and Gary Robson (Year 6 Teacher at Mountfield Primary School) found that the Arts Council England Quality Principles<\/a> and Newcastle University\u2019s Community Curriculum Making research had complementary characteristics. These gave them a common language and frameworks to explore the rich artistic opportunities that the collaboration presented. The children were able to navigate literature and the arts, from the local to the global, through their own learning journey.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom talking to and watching the students I am certain that many of them will remember this project into their adult life.\u00a0 This is a brilliant illustration of how ‘going places, like Seven Stories, meeting people like Dave and Debbie, and doing and making things, like the pop up museum’ takes the curriculum onto a another level of meaning.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Professor David Leat, Newcastle University<\/p>\n

The Schools’ and Partners’ Guide to Community Curriculum Making through Enquiry and Project Based Learning<\/a> guide was supported by ESRC Impact Acceleration<\/a> funding. With thanks to Laura Barrett and Debbie Beeks at Seven Stories, and Professor David Leat and Ulrike Thomas at Newcastle University, for their help with writing this blog post.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Newcastle University\u2019s Research Centre for Learning and Teaching publish their Schools\u2019 and Partners\u2019 Guide to Community Curriculum Making Through Enquiry and Project Based Learning, this post investigates a recent example of this research in practice. Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children\u2019s Books worked on an archive-based project in partnership with Mountfield Primary School … Continue reading “What is freedom? Community Curriculum Making, Seven Stories and Mountfield Primary School”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6222,"featured_media":319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,20,39,27],"tags":[16,4,14,7,34,17],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-collections","category-research","category-schools","category-teaching","tag-collections","tag-partnership","tag-public-engagement","tag-research","tag-schools","tag-seven-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/vitalnorth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}