Encompassing a Specialist Leader in Cultural Education and a Specialist Arts Practitioner, Shape North bring a combined range of skills, knowledge and experience spanning education, visual arts, creative practice, cultural, arts and heritage organisations and community based projects. Combined with excellent interpersonal and communication skills, this leads to highly effective and responsive creative consultancy and project management for organisations and individuals, whatever their needs.
Creative Health
Shape North are key partners in Evoke’s Creative Health Steering group, working alongside representatives from health, the University of Huddersfield, Library Services, CAMHs, artists, cultural organisations and youth workers. Leading research and trialling delivery models, the aim is to explore how the arts can be used as a social prescribing model to support and enhance children and young people’s mental health and emotional well being.
As the key partners from education, Shape North have been heavily involved in shaping the questions that the University used as a research tool within schools, with art providers and community providers, to analyse current offers and barriers to young people accessing art activities.
We are strongly advocating a partnership approach that moves solely away from a clinical approach, to one that also embraces managing health through creative activity.
Outcomes will include proven arts resources and a toolkit of creative activities and strategies, as well as CPD, to effectively support children’s mental health and therefore increase their overall learning potential in the classroom.
Summer Holiday Family Art Programme
As part of HAF provision, Shape North successfully designed, managed and co-ordinated a series of stimulating family art workshops, providing fun and accessible activities aimed at vulnerable families.
Working with a range of artists, activities spanned drama, visual arts, book-making, textiles and forest art. Everyone had fun – adults and children alike – in a safe and happy environment.
School Curriculum Development
Years of specialist arts teaching and school leadership mean that Shape North are the ideal consultants to support schools with their curriculum development.
Do you want to review your arts provision? Consider the progression of skills built into your scheme of work? Look at ways to develop children’s critical thinking and problem-solving across the curriculum? Develop your teacher’s use of creative approaches to learning? Expand your children’s cultural capital and understanding of their heritage? Shape North are happy to work with individual teachers, leadership teams, clusters of schools, trusts or whole authorities.
Arts Organisations and Businesses – Crafting Offers for Schools
Shape North are adept at supporting individuals and organisations to shape their creative offers for schools. Schools and settings are busy places, with huge curriculum demands. It is essential that any project or product designed for schools is purposeful and links clearly to children’s developmental needs.
Shape North will work in partnership with organisations to translate their vision into one that will work for both children/young people and their teachers. Support can be provided to write bids, proposals, trial projects and products and carefully evaluate the impact.
Community Sewing Skills Leading to Employment
Project managing a series of women’s sewing courses as part of the Woven Festival, is a pleasure. These courses are aimed at showcasing the hidden textiles skills that exist within communities and providing training on industrial machines to develop a portfolio of evidence for possible employment.
