Congratulations to Miss Hymers and Bretherton team for being shortlisted for the EDUCATE AWARDS 'Arts in Primary School' Award

Congratulations to Miss Hymers for being shortlisted for the EDUCATE AWARDS, 'The Arts in Primary School'.  

https://educateawards.co.uk/ Have a look at the website to see all the nominated schools. 

I would like to nominate Bretherton Endowed CE Primary School, under the Art Leadership of miss Lesley Hymers for the Outstanding Arts in School Award. For the last 18 months, Lesley has lead school through a transformation in the Arts. In order to explain, the amazing achievements at our small rural primary school, with only 107 pupils and 5 teaching staff, I will highlight some of the wonderful opportunities that have been on offer and the links to our community.

Miss Hymers set up an Arts Council where children passionate about the arts assist her in leading art in school. ( https://www.brethertonschool.org.uk/page/arts-council/62490) She has organised their visit to Salford to the Van Gogh and Banksy experience and the children then led an assembly, organised a in school art instillation linked to the artists and invited parents and our community to attend. (https://www.brethertonschool.org.uk/work/brilliant-banksy-inspired-assembly-by-the-arts-ambassadors/82909) and our final outside whole school art project is here, with each child in school creating a personal stencil for our display. It is great to see the complexity increase as we reach Year 6 children.

Annually we hold an art gallery where all children in school create a piece of art and we display them in frames like a gallery and parents and community are able to come and view and buy work. This year we have widened our passion for the arts and have invited famous local artists into school through our ART week and in specific sessions with classes. Sophie Martin, an illustrator from Cumbria worked with Class 2 and a relief artist with class 3.

We extended our art to include children from a local nursery into school to work with our children and inspire them (https://www.brethertonschool.org.uk/blog/bank-hall-kindergarten-visit-for-artsmark/82274) and children from Bishop Rawstorne High school were invited to work with year 6 to create Hive Hexagons together.

Extending the arts into dance, our Class 2 entered a virtual dance competition winning 2nd place for their interpretation of ‘Our Green World’ and we had professional dancers in school to work with the children (https://www.brethertonschool.org.uk/blog/artsmark-dance-session/83040) We have a huge Morris Dancing squad from reception to year 5 who perform regularly with the support of the Royal Preston Morris Men and are now learning Maypole. For the coronation, the whole school learned to country dance and we did so on Sports Day. (https://www.brethertonschool.org.uk/work/our-coronation-square-dance-on-sports-day-2023/82153)

Our children are encouraged in every class to orally tell stories and we enter an oral poetry telling competition each year.

Through music, and in particular our choir, we ensure that all children access music over and above the National Curriculum expectations. Our choir of ½ of kS2 children won the Lancashire Last Choir Standing Competition – first out of 31 outstanding entries and they were amazing! (https://www.brethertonschool.org.uk/work/recording-studio-session-for-the-choir/83538) In

addition, every class listens to a different genre of music each week and reflects and evaluates it and their enjoyment of it. It helps them become discerning listeners and performers.

We have 2 performances each year – Christmas is class 1 and 2 and Summer is class 3 and 4. All children are involved and also lead the lighting and sound. This year’s summer performance was the best yet – 3 performances with our whole school family and community invited. https://youtu.be/QliWS1FKwOM In addition to this we perform at a Cluster Performing Arts festival each year and take the whole school to the theatre- this year being The Lion King at Manchester to inspire all. Our year culminates with Bretherton’s Got Talent show and we often have to hold two audition days due to the number of entries.

Thank you to Miss Hymers and our incredible 2022/23 Arts Council who have inspired, supported and excelled in equal measure.( https://www.brethertonschool.org.uk/blog/awesome-artsmark-collaboration-displays/83979)

All in all, every child in school access The Arts as a right, with no exceptions and through the passion and enthusiasm of the staff leading – our children all see themselves as artists, in many disciplines. I hope that you too are enthused by the arts on offer and how much we achieve in our small school for all our children. They love all aspects of the arts!