Artsmark Award 2023 - 2025

Pupils and staff at St Helen’s Catholic Infant School are celebrating after receiving a prestigious Artsmark Award in a momentous year for the programme as it celebrates 20 years of arts, culture and creativity in schools.

The Artsmark Award is the only creative quality standard for schools, accredited by Arts Council England. It supports schools to develop and celebrate arts and cultural education, putting creativity and wellbeing at the heart of the curriculum. Artsmark ensures every young person can be creative and access a diverse, high-quality cultural education.

In order to achieve the Artsmark Award, St Helen’s Catholic Infant School had to develop their arts and culture provision to embed a broad and ambitious curriculum. This was achieved by creating an overall plan that was committed to and delivered across the whole school.

The Artsmark assessor commended St Helen’s Catholic Infant School "You are positively increasing the emphasis on arts and culture and engaging with the Arts is having tangible results on pupils and staff. The Arts feature in school planning and are supported by SLT and a newly developed, progression-linked curriculum for art across the school. Pupils access a consistent and relevant range of experiences in school, digitally, and outside of the classroom which leads to showcasing within school, supported by extra-curricular activity. It’s great to hear about your Chinese New Year dance workshops, Yr2 working with A Level students for art development, children choosing hymns to practise and staff working jointly on World Book Day. It’s also good to see that the pandemic didn’t stop your arts engagement which continued online and through various adaptions, including filming Nativity and Easter productions and the starting of a school Twitter feed for showcasing. You have seen staff confidence grow with internal Arts Leader-led CPD, and some external support from Drama4all."

Dr Darren Henley CBE, Chief Executive of the Arts Council, said:

“I would like to congratulate St Helen’s Catholic Infant School on their Artsmark Award. Becoming an Artsmark school demonstrates that through offering a broad, ambitious, and creative curriculum, every pupil can develop character and resilience, increasing their knowledge, curiosity and skills that will remain with them through to adult life.”

We are extremely proud of achieving our Artsmark Silver Award. We are committed to delivering a high-quality arts and cultural education and we look forward to continuing to grow.