The British Science Association (BSA) is pleased to announce its application to the Arts Council England to pilot being an Artsmark Supporter has been accepted.
The Artsmark award celebrates schools that champion the arts and strive for excellence in their provision. This year the award has been redesigned by schools for schools, and now seeks to help schools strike a balance in meeting both English Baccalaureate and STEM priorities.
We believe this award cements the BSA’s belief that science is both a practical and creative pursuit and all our programmes value, encourage and reward creativity and innovation. The recent BSA Education partners meeting had over 50 individuals from a range of creative, cultural and STEM organisations attend.
We are also advocates of real world, genuine and relevant science investigations being set in schools rather than just predictable experiments that pose very little cognitive conflict.
Lindsey Pugh, Senior Manager: Children, Young People and Learning, Arts Council England, commented:
“We are very pleased to be working in partnership with the British Science Association. We see great potential, through arts and science collaborations, to promote opportunities for children and young people to engage in exciting interdisciplinary activities. Young people gain great personal satisfaction when they see and make connections across different ideas and learning disciplines; this capacity to draw on their curiosity and creativity is especially evident in programmes that explore the convergence of arts and STEM subjects.
“As an Artsmark Supporter, BSA will support schools on their Artsmark journey to build connections between arts, culture and science to ensure a broad and balanced curriculum that engages children and young people in the classroom and beyond. “
We would like to invite schools to get involved, and become Artsmark active.
Artsmark active schools can use BSA resources and activities in new ways to celebrate cross subject connections:
- Develop British Science Week arty activities; Use the British Science Week competition and activity pack as tools to enable cross subject collaborations (launched in January)
- Take part in the CREST Awards in conjunction with the Arts Awards, to recognise student’s achievements
- Take part in the CREST accredited ‘Astro Science Challenge’ which links to Tim Peake’s ‘Principia’ mission