Creative Communities Report 2011-12

CREATIVE COMMUNITIES ANNUAL REPORT 2011-2012

This has been a very exciting year for us at Thomas Tallis School. We have now moved into our new building, with many fantastic specialist spaces, a professional dojo, an olympic standard gymnasium, state of the art TV broadcasting studio, sound recording studio and professional photography dark room, to name just a few. This booklet demonstrates how we have begun to use our new building as a great learning resource for our students and community. We continue to deliver high quality learning experiences and further develop partnerships with primary and secondary schools, colleges, youth centres, local residents, arts and sports organisations, businesses, professional practitioners and other educational centres. We are committed to the changing needs of our community and aim to develop a strong, safe and supportive community for all.

Byron ParkerExecutive Headteacher

This year has been an extremely busy one with the new development complete and the delivery of numerous outstanding initiatives. We are very proud of our many achievements: successfully obtaining the Artsmark Gold Award from the Arts Council of England; hosting the official opening of our new building by The Right Honorable David Miliband MP; acknowldeging the hard work of staff supporting our students to achieve their potential and become positive members of our local community; and not forgetting the huge effort and commitment made by the young people themselves to succeed in their goals. We would also like to thank all of our partners, for their continued support. We look forward to another outstanding year.

Lisa SproatCreative Communities Development Manager

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow”Albert Einstein

Creating a sense of ownership is very important to us all at Thomas Tallis. We want to nurture our students and community by delivering innovative learning experiences, and by providing opportunities to engage, inspire, celebrate diversity and connect with common values, creating a true sense of belonging.

Introduction

The i scientist initiative brought together young people of all ages to work, with TED alumnus Beau Lotto and the Lottolab experts for six full day workshops in the Science Museum. During these workshops, the students asked many questions, designed real experiments, analysed their data, and came to their own conclusions. Students were tasked to explorer the science museum, investigate behind the scenes and visit the Labs while generating and developing their own games to examine the connection with sound and light during navigation. For this they used an iPod touch with an app

called ‘Sound Seer’ which generated a noise when the camera was pointed towards a range of colours. Students then collated all the data gathered from their experiment and made conclusions.

“It  was  great  to  take  part  in  this  project  with  a  variety  of  age  groups  as  this  really  enhanced  the  learning  experience  for  our  students”  Science  Teacher

“Anyone  who  has  never  made  a  mistake  has  never  discovered  anything  new”Albert  Einstein

iScientistWe are all scientists

This was the second year of participating in The National Theatre Connections Festival, involving hundreds of schools and theatre companies from across the country. Yet again Thomas Tallis drama students and staff created a highly energetic and fantastic performance. This year the play was “ So You Think You’re A Super Hero” written by Paven Virk, a humorous, quirky and funny play all about a secret sporting super hero, Z boy. Teen TV are keen to get the scoop, so they go undercover to the UK’s most prestigious sports academy to track down this sport superhero, but what do they find? With a cast of 30 students from year 7 - year 9, the show takes on a true comic book

flavour with characters larger then life.The students performed to audiences for 2 nights at Thomas Tallis School, then moved onto The Soho Theatre in the West End and then we were chosen as the most outstanding performance in the entire country and were asked to open at The National Theatre!

“  We  are  very  proud  of  our  students,  they  performed  with  great  gusto  and  commitment”Drama  Teacher

So You Think You’re A Super Hero ?There’s a super hero in all of us

Thomas Tallis year 9 students were paired with local primary schools and set the task to designed them a variety of learning games based on the topic they were studying to help develop their understanding. Through regular communication via bloggs, skype conversations and fantastic web tools such as Xtranormal and Voki, the Tallis students gathered

information and designed a number of bespoke games for their clients. Kidbrooke Park year 4 students were exploring the chocolate making process. John Ball year 3 students were researching Dinosaurs. Millennium primary year 1 students were studying different types of toys. Brindishe year 1 students were investigating the fire of London and

Ealdham year 2 students were examining locations around the world.

Game DesignLearning is fun

We have been awarded the British Council’s prestigious International School Award in recognition of our work to bring the world into the classroom. The International School Award is a badge of honor for schools that do outstanding work in international education, such as through links with partner schools overseas. Fostering an international dimension in the curriculum is at the heart of the our work, so that young people gain the cultural understanding and skills they need to live and work as global citizens. On hearing the news that we had received the Award, former Deputy Head Teacher Trish Dooley said:

“We  want  our  students  to  consider  themselves  as  global  citizens  and  to  achieve  this  we  plan  to  facilitate  their  global  experience  in  as  many  different  ways  as  we  can.  Making  international  links  with  schools  across  the  world  is  a  major  way  to  consolidate  this.”                        Deputy  Head

International School AwardOur Global Community

Thomas Tallis School, in partnership with The Lord’s Taverners, the Berkeley Group and the Metropolitan Police, brought ‘Take Back The Streets’ to Greenwich.

This was a free, multi-sports festival for local Primary, Secondary and SEN schools. Young people took part in a wide array of sports including; Judo, Rowing, Fitness, Gymnastics, Football, Rugby, Athletics and Cricket all with the aim to engage them in sport and focus our young people to keep them off the streets and in positive sports initiatives.

The day was a huge success and was attended by many local schools involving: John Roan, Kidbrooke Park, Holy Family, and Thomas Tallis. All the students that took part also received a workshop with the police. This was to empower the young people by giving them information about their stop and search rights and also to forge positive relationships. We hope to run this very important and successful event again in the future.

Many thanks to all partners involved for their expert contributions.

Community Sports EventSport Takes Back The Streets in Greenwich

“Sports  do  not  build  character.  They  reveal  it”Haywood  Hale  Broun

Charlton School took a group of 12 students on a residential journey to Swanage as part of the learning Away initiative. The activities of the week included walks around the Dorset town and collecting flowers, grass and materials with which to make art. Other activities included making the biggest sand castle, finding ways to transfer water from one place to another, learning about different types of plants and even a group game of using natural materials to make a place of residence for the homeless bears. This later led to a hot dinner at the residential canteen and all group members then had play time in the games room, or could watch a DVD in a room that had a projector and a surround sound system. In regards to the young people’s development and personal targets, over 50% of individuals through the course of the week developed their listening skills

and improved in areas such as following instructions. Team building and finding new was of how to interact with new and existing members of the group was a key part of individual development and over 70% of the group excelled in this area. One member of the group enjoyed himself so much that he managed to overcome his fear of sand. Once he saw all his class mates and the rest of the group making sand castles and playing tag, he wanted to join in.

Overall the young people had a great time and seemed to enjoy every minute of the experience. Staff feel that targets were met, individually and collectively and the students were awarded by planting a tree at the end the visit. Thomas Tallis School is proud to support such initiatives through the Learning Away Programme.

Learning Outside The ClassroomCharlton School’s Educational Adventure

Dance and Art ProjectJoe Walking and Sally Mckay (Professional Dancer/Fine Artist) worked with 7DS, on a Dance, Art project. Students learned to sketch from live dancers, to reproduce complex contemporary dance phrases and develop these sketches and phrases into 3D wire sculptures. Students were encouraged to work fast to capture the essence of the movement. The students completed dance phrases and sculptures were exciting and vibrant.

Dance ShowcaseThe dance department hosted our first dance showcase in our main hall. We invited local Primary, Secondary and Higher Education dance providers plus London Professional Schools to bring one or two dance pieces to share with our year 9 students in performance. This successful event clearly highlighted the progression routes in dance training. It was fantastic to see 3rd year degree students from Laban sharing the bill with reception classes.

Boyz-Hip-Hop Day Professional Street Dance Company Impact Dance ran an amazing day of hip-hop dance activities for year 7-9 boys at Tallis. 30 boys explored Locking, Popping and Stepping in a 5 hour workshop. The day culminated with a sharing of the work they had created. All students had a great experience and the dance department is now looking to create a boyz dance team inspired by this catalyst project.

Dance FestivalA Magical Fusion of Dancing Talents

For the last 18 months, Paul Barnsley, Business Partner at Clydesdale Bank has worked with the school's Career Academy Local Advisory Network as one of the school’s Partners In Business. Paul arranged for Steve Cram to present to our 6th form students and meet with the Rep London Students. Over lunch Steve met with the students who will work as Rep London Ambassadors in the 2012 Olympics and then he talked with the school’s Career Academy Students and two of the student governors. He also ran a 30 minute training session with the schools promising Year 8 athletes and then spoke to our Year 12 about Preparation, Motivation and Goal Setting.

Cliford Chance has been a Thomas Tallis School partner for the last 3 years. The company has committed to a programme whereby, over the course of a year, they have worked closely with the 25 Year 10 BTEC Level 2 Diploma in Business students. They are a founding member of PRIME, a UK-wide initiative that aims to improve access to the legal profession for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.The project includes raising aspirations through visits to Clifford Chance.

Clifford Chance volunteers visited the school to discuss issues such as job roles and functions, organisational structure, recruitment and human resources. They conducted mock interviews and advised on CV writing.

Business LinksWorking with Professionals

The ‘Tell It’ project, was created by Theatre Centre, a touring theatre company based in Hackney who specialize in making work for young people. The project aim was to give young Londoners living in the five Olympic boroughs a platform to express their opinions about what matters most to them in this time of transition for their communities. The project connected 5 secondary schools, one from each borough and linked 15 students from each school between the ages of 11-13 through workshops, online networking and a summer university. This final performance will be given the chance to feed into a brand new play.Students have participated in 4 skills based workshops focusing on the

their sense of their community and themselves within it. Within these workshops students were given the opportunity to work with professional artists on street dance, performance poetry, design and filmmaking.

The final half term ‘university’ and performance at Hoxton Hall was a huge success and succeeded in celebrating the talents of all the young people who took part.

“I  think  it  was  really  fun  and  I  would  love  to  do  it  again”Student

Tell ItNew Experiences

As part of their ASDAN qualification, a group of Tallis girls took part in a song writing workshop to boost their confidence and self-esteem. With the support of Tallis staff and Kocoa Brown a professional singer/songwriter, the girls each wrote their own set of song lyrics about their personal life journey. They then shared their lyrics with great empathy and understanding. The group collaborated to create one song using lines from their individual songs. With the help of Kocoa the girls came up with a melody and discussed the style of the song. They then put their words to the music and decided who would like to sing what parts and rehearsed. The girls then moved from the classroom to our recording studio, to record the track. The whole project took place over 4,

1 hour lessons and in that 4-hour period the students created something truly breath taking. We saw students who were not very confident suddenly shine. One student has continued to write her own song lyrics that are incredibly moving. The group are looking forward to the next project and now seem to be more motivated to achieve their goals.

We will continue to support students in developing their emotional intelligence. They have already started to identify some of their barriers to learning and how they can improve.

We are so proud of them.

Personal Journey Lyrics

Finding Strength in song

“Friendship  family  laughter  and  friends,There  for  you  until  the  end,Love  and  tears  life  isn’t  planned,The  rest  remains  unwritten.”Exert  of  lyrics  written  by  the  year  8  girls  group

“I  now  won't  give  up  so  easily  when  things  get  tough.”  Student

Life & DeafExploring My Identity

‘Life & Deaf’ was a Speech and Language project, which aimed to develop Deaf children’s self-esteem and communication in signed, spoken and written languages. In Speech and Language Therapy sessions, the children explored their feelings about their Deaf identity. They created mindmaps from brainstorms, explored poetry about identity in different cultures, developed their vocabulary of emotions and wrote their own unique poetry. As the project developed, the Deaf children worked with professional Deaf poets, Deaf Instructors and actors to translate their written poetry into BSL and learn to perform this confidently. They then worked with designers,

photographers, film-makers and editors (both deaf and hearing) to create a beautiful book and a DVD of their BSL poetry.

This culminated in an exhibition and performance at The Purcell Rooms on London’s Southbank and the world premiere of a film created by Eelyn Lee Productions, based on the young people’s poetry. This was an incredibly moving and impressive event and Thomas Tallis School is very proud to have had the opportunity to support it.

“I  couldn't  believe  how  packed  the  space  was,  the  high  quality  of  the  poetry,  the  beauty  of  British  Sign  Language,  and  how  fabulous  the  deaf  students  were  from  Thomas  Tallis.  This  was  a  terriKic  example  of  the  true  meaning  of  listening  to  the  pupils'  voice”  Madelaine  CaplinSenior  SEN  Inspector  Greenwich  Children’s  Services

This year, 3 music students from Trinity College of Music came into Tallis to run a workshop, with our year 8 gifted and talented students, which was based on the Olympics. Day one began with some whole group ‘getting to know you’ activities, and quickly progressed onto focusing on improvisation and composition. There was an array of instruments that the students could play and they used these to create pieces of music based on the feelings of the competitors at different points during the games. The afternoon of day one saw the students split into four groups in order to compose pieces of music based on different sports. Diving, long jump, javelin and boxing were chosen, and each group composed a piece that would represent their chosen sport. The day then culminated in each group performing their work to each other. Some of the music that had been

composed really captivated the sense of the chosen sport.Much of day two involved the students putting final touches to their pieces, whole group and small group, for a final performance that afternoon. As a whole group, the students also created a song to open and close their ‘Olympic Ceremony’, with students pitching ideas for lyrics to the group and the best lines being chosen.At the end of day two, the group performed all of their compositions to an audience. The ‘ceremony’ commenced with their Olympic song, followed by the whole group and small group pieces alternately, and ended with another triumphant rendition of the song. All the students impressed the visitors who commented in detail on their hard work, commitment and musical talent, which they had demonstrated throughout the two days.

Musicians in EducationLearning From Teachers of The future

The Equality and Diversity course aims to engage students by using new technologies. The main focus is to look at how students learn. The students used an array of online tools to experiment with and create the body of their work. Tools such as Tumblr, Audioboo, Popplet, Facebook etc. In addition, students were able to express their ideas using mediums such as photography and filming. The

central theme of the course is social justice. Students investigated how identity can be adversely affected by negative attitudes, which ultimately lead to prejudice and discrimination within a community. Students started by looking at themselves, then to question the ways in which the local, national and global communities handle these issues in society. The methods for investigation were researching and analysing information and sharing ideas through class discussions and formal

debates. To add the finishing touches to the course, our ‘class community’ decided to make a community news film. Students created storyboards and wrote interview questions on how to combat intolerance and extremism in the local community. A whole spectrum of community leaders came into the school to be interviewed using the new Tallis broadcast studio. We were very proud of the students achievements.

Equality and Diversity Year 11 Students Interview Our Community

"We  all  should  know  that  diversity  makes  for  a  rich  tapestry,  and  we  must  understand  that  all  the  threads  of  the  tapestry  are  equal  in  value  no  matter  what  their  color."  Maya  Angelou

We were very lucky to be approached by The Nathan Timothy Foundation and offered the chance for our students to take part in a Song Writing Marathon Day! The whole project took place over 26 days, with 26 schools and created 26 fantastic Olympic songs. The workshop addressed the emotional health and wellbeing of children and young people using songwriting and music. Students sang, wrote lyrics, performed, recorded themselves and played instruments.

The key outcome of the sports tracks was for the students to create an original song for their school to celebrate the 30th Olympiad in 2012 in London. The students created

their very own sports anthem, focusing on exploring the life’s challenges through the metaphor of an aspiring champion.

They explored feelings around the following themes, What makes a champion, competition, success, defeat, hope and team spirit, team work, supporting one another, friendship and championing one another.

What our students created in that one day was nothing short of amazing!

Olympics InitiativesReady, Steady, Sing!

We are very proud to announce that Tallis has been awarded the Artsmark Gold Award from Arts Council England. Artsmark is the national programme that enables schools, further education colleges and youth justice centres to evaluate, celebrate and strengthen a quality arts offer.

We ensure that every young person has the opportunity to experience the arts by promoting high quality arts education, giving our students a wide variety of extra curricular arts initiatives, developing relationships with arts companies and professional arts practitioners and by supporting our students moving onto universities arts colleges and careers in the creative industries. We also recognise the benefits that arts

activities have on our students’ social and emotional development, allowing them to build on key cognitive, motor, and language skills.

“Your  application  demonstrated  an  excellent  commitment  to  providing  high  quality  arts  provision  that  is  embedded  across  your  curriculum  and  we  would  like  to  congratulate  you  on  the  hard  work  and  commitment  that  went  into  achieving  this  respected  award”Arts  Council  England

Artsmark Gold AwardHigh quality Arts for all at Tallis

Our Partners

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Contact Us...

Thomas Tallis SchoolKidbrooke Park RoadLondonSE3 9PXwww.thomastallis.co.uk

Lisa SproatCreative Communities Development [email protected]

Jon NichollsDirector of [email protected]

Douglas GreigDeputy Head Teacher responsible for Specialist School [email protected]

Annmarie WoodcraftAnnmarie WoodcraftBusiness Links [email protected]