Cultural and Creative Ambassadors

The Cultural and Creative Ambassadors Project, a partnership between Renaissance East Midlands, Leicester City Council and Creative Partnerships launched in April 2007. The project is creating a body of cultural and creative practitioners and organisations throughout Leicester and Leicestershire who are developing partnerships with city and county schools.

Through the scheme schools nominate one teacher as a creative and cultural ambassador to receive regular information from cultural partners to share with their school community. The scheme will create a two-way dialogue between schools and creative practitioners, enabling schools to seek expert advice and opportunities to deliver the National Curriculum through creative activity.

The scheme, piloting in Leicester City and Leicestershire, will enable schools to simply and quickly access information about the wide variety of education-linked cultural and creative activities on offer and help cultural partners get their information to the right person in the school at the right time.

Cultural partners include larger bodies, independent artists and freelance performers.

So far there have been two mailings to ambassador teachers as well as fortnightly e-bulletins highlighting opportunities across the county and city. Teachers have benefited from six training sessions focusing on the arts and humanities curriculum.

One of the successful projects so far has been a partnership between Leicester’s City Gallery and Regent College. The Gallery learning officer led a gallery talk and tour and discussion followed by a drawing with wire workshop and activity to create rust prints. Students then discussed their work, explored the mark making technique and worked with the artist to evaluate their work. 

Participants were delighted and feedback included: "Thank you for such a great time, I really enjoyed myself as I'm sure everyone else did. This experience has been very interesting" and "Thank you for helping me realise there is a kind of art for everyone."

For more information on the scheme and how you can get involved, contact Catherine Hallsworth, the Cultural and Creative Ambassadors Coordinator, on 0116 252 7392 or email cca@leicester.gov.uk. More information is also available on the Cultural and Creative Ambassadors page of the Leicester City Council website.