If you are a school or arts organisation that would like to apply for funding to support teachers deliver arts in our primary schools this is available now from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

The Purpose of the Fund

The purpose of the Teacher Development Fund is to support delivery of effective arts-based teaching and learning opportunities in the primary classroom, and to embed learning through the arts in the curriculum. It aims to do this through supporting teachers and school leaders to develop the necessary skills, knowledge, confidence and experience.

Each year we expect to make around five grants of up to £150,000 to partnerships of arts/cultural organisations and up to ten schools, who will work together for two academic years.

There will be a single annual deadline for the Teacher Development Fund. The next deadline is 23 March 2018.

Our focus is on:

• Primary schools
• Supporting children and young people experiencing disadvantage
• Approaches which involve learning through the arts
• Long-term, inquiry-based projects which support teachers’ professional development and learning
• Promoting effective and equitable partnerships between schools and arts/cultural organisations and artist practitioners
• The contributions of school leaders and artist practitioners as both professional learners and as supporters of embedding learning through the arts in the curriculum
• Approaches which involve any of the following art forms: crafts; creative writing, including poetry; dance; design; film; music; opera; photography; digital arts and media; theatre and drama; the visual arts; and cross-arts practices.

In order to understand the context of teacher continuing professional development and learning across the UK, PHF has funded seven pilot projects (June 2016 to July 2018). During the pilot phase, we have worked in partnership with the Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education (CUREE) who has undertaken formative evaluation and delivered a programme of grantee learning. An evaluation report on the first year of the pilot phase is available here.

The films and blogs included in this area of the site give further detail about the purpose and priorities of the Teacher Development Fund and the work of the pilot projects.

If you would like to receive details of future deadlines for the Teacher Development Fund, please e-mail ela@phf.org.uk.

Teacher Development Fund

Primary Music Lesson: Rhythmically Speaking: 12 Building Structure and Variation

Mark Taylor, director of Rhythmically Speaking, explores variation around a simple structure to further develop the samba ensemble.