Why and How? 2017
Engaging children with special educational needs in creative experiences and making art
Saturday 18 March 2017 10am - 6pm
Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly
£75, £55 reductions.
Supported by Robin Hambro
This conference will provide a space for attendees to consider approaches and develop ideas around the nature and value of cultural and artistic engagement for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Join us for a day of talks, workshops, networking and discussion sessions to explore, stretch and question creative approaches to engaging children with SEND.
This year’s presenters were selected by our panel from an open submission process. We sought proposals that showed innovative practice in regard to engaging children with SEND, with particular focus given to this year’s three key themes:
– Mental health and wellbeing
– Autism
– Evaluation/legacy
There will be a range of presentations and workshops delivered by SEND teachers, artist educators, disability specialists and gallery and museum professionals.
Attendees will explore their own creativity and share ideas and experiences while taking part and contributing to talks, roundtable discussions and practical workshops.
This conference is generously supported by Robin Hambro.
£75, £55 reductions.
Supported by Robin Hambro
About the conference
The day will begin with tea and coffee and opening talks.
Participants will then attend a selection of three practical workshops or creative discussion sessions, which they will be able to select in advance. We will have a break for lunch and refreshments for networking between the sessions.
The final element to the day will be a presentation and discussion session addressing the unique aspects of female autism and its impact on educational and arts organisations.
If you are interested in learning and contributing to learning about why and how we engage children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities in exploring and creating art, then you should attend this conference.
Last year’s attendees included teachers, gallery and museum professionals, consultants and artist educators.
£75 / £55 reductions
Coming with a colleague? We love to encourage people learning together, so make use of our offer to buy one ticket and get one at our reduced ticket price.
One ticket includes:
• Access to the day’s range of talks, workshops and networking
• Course learning materials and handouts
• Lunch and refreshments
Booking
If you are unable to book online, please contact us on 020 7300 8090 and select option 1.
Please be aware that if you’re booking on behalf of other people, we will need the individual contact information for each attendee.
Once you book you will be contacted to provide further information and to choose your preferred workshops. Each workshop has a limited capacity and although we will always strive to ensure your choice of sessions, this may not always be possible.
Workshops, talks and discussions
Opening talk: Working together to bring out the best in our students
Kathryn Hitchings, Elizabeth Lickiss and Pip McGrath from St Joseph’s Specialist School and College
St Joseph’s Specialist School and College is a co-educational residential and day school catering for children between the ages of 5 and 19 with complex and severe learning difficulties, many of whom are on the autistic spectrum. There is a unique partnership that exists within the school between the Art Teacher, Artist in Residence (AIR) and Art Therapist. They are now in the second year of running the Artist in Residence programme. Their shared approach has had an incredible impact on the creativity and mental well-being of their young people.
In this opening talk, Head of Art Kathryn Hitchings will give a brief description of the school and the history of this arts partnership. Head of Creative Arts Elizabeth Lickiss will then provide ideas on how to persuade senior leadership to invest in an Artist in Residence programme, including evidence of the impact of learning following a year with the previous AIR.
Kathryn and Art Therapist Pip McGrath will then use several real student case studies to show how working together promotes well being and creativity among their young people.
A holistic approach on how to embed creativity, self-awareness and achievement through Arts Award and partnerships.
Leslie Palanker and Cheryl Rounthwaite
“Children need art and stories and poems and music as much as they need love and food and fresh air and play.” – Phillip Pullman
This workshop aims to inspire and support teachers and museum and cultural professionals to develop strong partnerships in order to create programmes together that provide new experiences in and outside school that can be embedded in the curriculum at a SEND school.
In the first half of this workshop, attendees will learn how Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums and Bamburgh School built up their partnership over the past two years. Leslie Palanker and Cheryl Rounthwaite will explain the integration of Arts Award and the impact it has had on the children, teachers, and the museum service. In the second half, attendees will engage in artistic, literary and musical activities that are used to push boundaries, raise awareness and create a sense of achievement in young SEND learners completing an Arts Award. During the workshop, participants will have an opportunity to use the new exhibition America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s to respond to the workshop activities.
Attendees are asked to wear comfortable clothing, rolling on the floor is optional!
Multiple creative uses of shaving foam
Kathryn Hitchings and Pip McGrath
This workshop will provide attendees with a number of ways they can use shaving foam with SEN children and adults – both for creative educational outcomes or as a useful therapeutic tool.
Kathryn will provide each participant with a range of foams, encouraging delegates to get messy and have fun exploring a number of creative ideas and activities. Pip will then facilitate the latter part of the workshop, supporting participants in the session to experience and discuss the various therapeutic purposes for using foams.
Dress for mess and expect to come out with lots of real ideas to use in the future!
Opening doors and creating interactive environments
with Debbie Goldsmith and Sarah Marsh
Debbie and Sarah will invite participants into an interactive, sensory environment to explain the new Creative Studio pilot they have developed at Tate Liverpool; a multi-sensory workshop for children with autism, other social communication issues, their siblings, parents and carers.
Participants will be encouraged to interact and respond to the room’s environment while exploring themes, materials and approaches to welcoming and including children with a range of access requirements in creative activities and spaces.
Autism, sensory processing, wellbeing and clay!
with Tatjana Zeljic
This workshop will focus on sensory processing in autism and the use and value of tactile materials to enhance creative engagement and wellbeing. Tatjana will introduce new ideas regarding the importance of sensory exploration for children with autism and its link to emotional wellbeing, while leading participants through a practical workshop exploring techniques using clay.
Attendees will be encouraged to share their own experiences and thoughts throughout the session in the hope of building a collective understanding of effective methods of engaging children with autism and other SEND in sensory exploration.
Sensory engagement and mental wellbeing for all
with Joanna Grace
Research shows that engagement with the sensory world is preventative of stress anxiety and depression. In this session, participants will explore the benefits engaging with the sensory world can have on ourselves, as inclusion facilitators and as human beings. We will discover how these personal benefits then ripple outwards to benefit those around us.
Attendees will relate the insights they gain to how they can better include individuals with profound and multiple learning disabilities, individuals with complex disabilities, people experiencing the later stages of dementia, babies in the first few months of life and individuals on the autistic spectrum for whom the sensory world is their primary experience of life.
It can be easy to feel under pressure to produce all-singing, all-dancing multi-sensory sessions to impress onlookers, when actually these experiences can often overwhelm and overload the precise people they are meant to include, and overburden the people facilitating them.
Join Joanna to discover the enormous benefit of spending time contemplating your own experience and create a beautifully simple sensory experience to take away and share.
Music and movement for children on the autism spectrum
with Athina Stamou
This session will begin with a talk about and discussion of the recent research study on the impact of music and movement for primary-aged autistic children attending mainstream schools.
Pupils who participated in the research study were introduced to a variety of storytelling props, art tasks and a range of music and movement activities. In comparison to language-based tasks, music and dance were found to have a positive impact for all pupils involved in the study, especially in relation to their engagement and focus on tasks and inclusion in the group.
In the second half of the session, attendees will be guided through a practical session of movement and dance, accompanied by live music. This workshop will provide delegates with ideas about how to lead a music and movement session as a whole, or how to incorporate elements of music and movement into other lesson plans.
Making the invisible visible
with Helen Bates, Rachel Bates, Ellen Li, Susan Potter, Sarah Wild
In 2016, a unique creative collaboration resulted in A Girl like Tilly, a new book about female autism. Though inspired by a very personal story, A Girl like Tilly fills an important niche in the current literature about female autism, covering a subject which is only now beginning to be properly studied and understood. This panel discussion will focus upon the inspiration for the publication, the need for further research in the field and the value of collaborative working. During this participatory session, we aim to discuss female autism and alternative means for communication; what "making a difference" looks like and how we might use all available resources – including arts and cultural activity – to facilitate hope and implement change.
Biographies
Kathryn Hitchings
Kathryn is the Head of Art at St Joseph’s Specialist School, Cranleigh. This is her fourth year at the school and last October she was delighted to receive the Arts Teacher in Special Education Award from the Unique Art Awards. Prior to teaching in art in an SEN context, Kath spent many years in mainstream primary education, modelling her style on a heady fusion of Mrs Doubtfire and Dewey Finn from School of Rock.
As a part-time teacher, Kath also practices as a freelance community artist, specialising in guerrilla knitting, rag-rugging and free-motion embroidery. She has worked for the UK Handknitting Association and collaborated with The Craft Council in the promotion of knitting in schools. In one school she famously taught every pupil to knit. Her woolly antics have led to numerous TV and radio appearances, including on the BBC’s One Show. Kathryn runs workshops for a range of people groups and adores the way creative practice can bring different folk together.
Instagram: @Knitchings
Elizabeth Lickiss
Elizabeth is Head of the Arts Faculty at St Joseph’s Specialist School and College, which has Arts Specialism status. St Joseph’s caters for children with complex and severe learning/behavioural difficulties, many of whom are on the autistic spectrum.
Elizabeth has a BA Hons degree in Related Arts and is a class and drama teacher. She has extensive experience of heading up arts specialisms in several schools. Elizabeth was inspired to teach after working alongside schools on the BBC School Report initiative. As an award-winning producer/presenter and writer, she has worked for both commercial and BBC radio networks throughout the world. She is an awards judge and mentor to young people hoping to work in the media industry. Elizabeth has travelled extensively and has seen firsthand how the arts influence, encourage, inspire and motivate young people. She is passionate about promoting and encouraging schools and colleges to embrace arts education as an essential and foundational tool in developing the whole child.
Debbie Goldsmith
In her role as Early Years & Families Curator at Tate Liverpool, Debbie programmes gallery-based activities for families throughout the year, which include artist-led sessions, self-led resources for use in the gallery and a rolling, continuous programme for a dedicated family space. Debbie also works with the Tate Liverpool Family Collective, a group of local parents who co-develop a programme for early years and a family programme. She recently hosted a groundbreaking research project: My Primary School is at the Museum, which involved a local nursery trading their nursery setting for the gallery spaces. More recently, Debbie has been working on creative studio sessions for children with autism and other social communication issues.
Sarah Evelyn Marsh
Sarah is a visual artist, gallery educator and creative consultant who creates interactive, sensory-based installations for people to engage with. These environments explore sensory-based elements that include sound, light, texture and emotion. Over the past few years Sarah has been involved in the development of autism-friendly sessions within galleries and museums in the northwest of England. Through monthly sessions at Manchester Art Gallery, she’s researched, experimented and observed the way children with autism, their families and carers interact with the spaces she creates and the materials introduced. She currently runs autism-friendly sessions at Tate Liverpool, these allow her to expand her ideas and make connections with new spaces and families. This work has transformed into an integral element of her artistic practice that is continually developing.
Tatjana Zeljic
Tatjana Zeljic has been working as a play therapist, teacher for over ten years. Currently she is the Head of Primary Department in College Park School, Westminster. She has experience of working with pupils with a range of special educational needs including autism, emotional and behavioural difficulties, complex and severe learning difficulties. Tatjana has completed her MSc in Educational Neuroscience and she participated as a researcher on the BASIS study (British Autism Study of Infant Siblings).
Joanna Grace
Joanna Grace is an international sensory engagement and inclusion specialist and founder of The Sensory Projects. The Sensory Projects run on the belief that with the right knowledge and a little creativity inexpensive items can become effective tools for inclusion. Joanna bases her work on knowledge gained from research and from an extensive personal and professional background in the world of inclusion. Through the ever-increasing number of sensory projects Joanna is seeking to contribute to a world where people are understood in spite of their differences. The most recent sensory project, the sensory-being project, looked at how the sensory world and mindfulness practice can come together in an inclusive way. Many of the insights gained through this project feed into Joanna’s session for this year’s Why and How.
Joanna is very active on social media and can be found tweeting sensory insights from @jo3grace and sharing sensory makes on Facebook.
Leslie Palanker
Leslie Palanker has been an Assistant Learning Officer for Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) for over five years. TWAM is a major regional museum, art gallery and archives service. They manage a collection of nine museums and galleries across Tyneside and the Archives for Tyne and Wear and hold collections of international importance in archives, art, science and technology, archaeology, military and social history, fashion and natural sciences. Leslie has worked across the service's museums and galleries and developed and led numerous learning programs for primary, secondary, and early years’ children, families, SEND schools and units. Prior to working for TWAM, Leslie lived in Nice, France and was the head of the Primary EAL Department for the International School of Nice for ten years, where utilising the creative arts in teaching was an integral part of the program. Leslie studied History of Art, has a MA in Museum Studies and owned and ran her own gallery in New York City, showcasing the work of American and international outsider artists, before moving abroad in 2000.
Athina Stamou
Athina Stamou currently works as an outreach specialist Teacher for autism, providing support and training to professionals and parents of pupils on the autism spectrum attending inner-city mainstream schools. She has taught in mainstream and special education for over ten years, in London and Greece. She was recently awarded a PhD in Education and her research focuses on autism, inclusion, music and dance. Athina holds an MA in Special and Inclusive Education with a focus on dance therapy for autistic individuals and a PGDip in Social Research Methods. She is a dance performer and dance lecturer in further education and in the community, teaching dance to learners of all ages and abilities.
Susan Potter
Susan has a background in creative and cultural learning, with over 25 years’ experience of working with museums, galleries and arts organisations across the UK. Her expertise is in arts evaluation and research. Evaluation commissions with SEND pupils and students include: Open Doors delivered by Sinfonia Viva; Relaxed Performance delivered by Children & the Arts; START Hospice Project delivered by the Fitzwilliam Museum and the SEN Schools Programme delivered by the RA. Her current research is focused on the psychology of participating in the arts, with its specific impacts upon individual mental health and wellbeing. She has completed a scoping study for Arts Council England investigating early intervention mental health support via the arts and in September 2016 became research associate with the Sidney de Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health.
Ellen Li
Ellen is a London-based illustrator and graphic designer who graduated from the London College of Communication (LCC). While at LCC she undertook a year in industry, working for the Times, Selfridges, Makerie Studio and Thomas Matthews. Her work often focuses on everyday observations and presenting familiar scenarios in a new way. Ellen’s preferred previous projects have involved collaborating with others and learning something new. She enjoys taking on new challenges and her past work ranges from designing logos and setting up websites for small businesses to illustrating and producing booklets. In her work, Ellen aims to take an alternative approach to familiar subject matters, sometimes focusing on capturing a specific mood. She has a strong interest in social matters and a passion for sustainable living.
Helen Bates
Helen is the author of A Girl Like Tilly and the mother of Rachel Bates. She wrote the book to raise a greater awareness of those issues facing girls and women on the autistic spectrum and the critical need for early identification and support. Helen has more than 30 years’ experience as a social work practitioner and family therapist in diverse locations across the UK and in a range of settings, predominantly specialist child and adolescent mental health services. Although Helen is now semi-retired, she continues to provide training in child and adolescent mental health via Cambridge and Peterborough Mental Health Foundation Trust, to teaching and support staff working in schools and colleges across Cambridgeshire.
Rachel Bates
Rachel is a 39-year-old woman on the autistic spectrum. She was diagnosed late in her life – at 32 years old – resulting in negative impacts upon her education and life more generally. Rachel enjoys a wide range of music, having played in a punk band when she was younger. She likes to read books about history, play golf and has a passion for motorbikes. She would dearly love to study her favourite subjects, Egyptology and the classical world but she has been unable to do so due to anxiety and other health issues. Rachel has been a consultant for A Girl Like Tilly and has recently begun a blog on the book’s website, with the aim of making a difference to those girls and women on the autistic spectrum.
Sarah Wild
Sarah is Headteacher of Limpsfield Grange School in Oxted, Surrey. The school specialises in teaching girls with communication and interaction difficulties, including autism. Since her appointment as Headteacher, Sarah has dedicated time to raising awareness of female autism nationally. Limpsfield Grange School was the subject of the ITV documentary Girls with Autism, while students of the school have written two novels, M in the Middle and M is for Autism, with the author Vicky Martin. Sarah and students from Limpsfield Grange have spoken nationally about female autism, including at the recent NAHT Conference, The Big Shout. Sarah is a member of the Autism and Girls Forum, regularly contributing to publications and online platforms about the issues facing girls and young women with autism.
Pip McGrath
Pip is the art therapist at St. Joseph’s Specialist School and College and has worked at the school for the past five years within the extensive therapies team. In addition to being a member of the British Association of Art Therapists (BAAT) and HCPC-registered, she has a BA (Hons) in Photomedia and an MA in Art Therapy. She has worked in many different schools as a counsellor and art therapist, from mainstream primary to private secondary schools. However, she’s worked mainly with children with SEN for the last 12 years: first as a playworker for KIDS learning the importance of getting messy, having fun and how to communicate with and engage challenging children, then as an art therapist within specialist schools. She loves working holistically with children and young people and believes passionately that communication within teams is key to working successfully.