Buckinghamshire teachers celebrated as Cultural and Creative Champions

Buckinghamshire Cultural Education Partnership, Young Creative Bucks, celebrated the achievement of the first cohort of their Bucks Cultural and Creative Champions last month at Discover Bucks Museum. Supported by Artswork, the programme’s aim is to provide creative and inspirational professional development for teachers and support them to build links with the cultural sector to bring more creativity into the classroom and make sure all their young people can enjoy the cultural richness of the county. 

Participants took part in three inspiration sessions and were offered coaching sessions with an experienced coach to support the creative priorities. To complete they shared evidence of a new partnership with a cultural organisation, a creative CPD session they had delivered to colleagues and their reflections on the impact that being part of the Champions programme had on themselves and their school across the year. 

Andria Zafirakou, winner of the 2018 Global Teacher Award, presented our first Champions with their certificates and a signed copy of her book Those Who Can, Teach. She spoke movingly about the transformative impact she had seen in some of her own students when given creative and artistic opportunities and why it is so important that all children and young people should have these chances. 

“Thank you for running such a fantastic programme. It has been an honour to be one of the first to benefit from the opportunities to network and promote the Arts.”Participant

We have a second cohort of teachers ready to start this year’s Champions programme but if you are a teacher in a Buckinghamshire school there is still time to join them. Contact Claire Willis cwillis@youngcreativebucks.org to find out more.