Cultural Capital

Cultural Capital is threaded throughout our curriculum and school day to achieve this. We accomplish this through our carefully selected Prime Learning Challenges, in assemblies, the books we share in classrooms, the music and art pupils are exposed to, and our chosen trips and in-school workshops. Our ultimate aim is that our pupils leave our school with an understanding of what has come before, coupled with the confidence to grow up and create new and exciting forms of culture.

Pupils gain a wider understanding and an appreciation of the best of ideas, concepts and human achievements through carefully chosen curriculum themes. The school invests significant time and funding in providing enhancements and initiatives to ensure this is embedded. The school has actively developed links with a range of local and national cultural establishments, and our work with these organisations opens doors for our pupils. For example, pupils develop a sense of the cultural heritage of their home town and have the opportunity to visit the National Gallery. Similarly, our annual engagement with the National Gallery’s Take One Picture project provides pupils with the unique opportunity to have their work exhibited in the National Gallery.

Pupils also participate in an annual whole-school cultural awareness project where they work with other pupils across the school to create a collaborative artwork entitled ‘We are all Under the Same Sky’, which encapsulates the idea that we are all under the same sky, no matter where we are on earth. Learning is centred around images of the sky from locations around the globe which have been taken by people living in each region. The project’s ultimate aim is to develop pupils’ knowledge and understanding of the cultural differences between communities around the world and that – despite these differences – we are all under the same sky.

Throughout the project, learning is focused on, for example, the differences in the way people around the world carry out their daily lives, including the foods eaten, travel, housing and schooling, etc., the differences in clothing between communities around the world, the differences in jewellery between communities around the world, the differences in toys played with children around the world, the different art produced by communities around the world, and the different music created and played by communities across the globe.

Assemblies are also used to expose pupils to the best that has been taught and help engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement. Similarly, at the end of each school day, pupils recite poems with the aim that they will know a bank of poetry by heart by the time they leave our school.

As well as this, we pledge that all children will:

• Visit a gallery
• Visit a museum
• Experience a theatre performance
• Represent the school at an event
• Be given a job of responsibility
• Cook and bake
• Dress up and dress down
• Build a fire and toast marshmallows
• Care for others and learn how to be a good friend
• Learn about where they live, so they know their local area well
• Attend Hobby School
• Be immersed in a culture of talk
• Undertake artist studies
• Visit a zoo
• Develop an understanding of different cultures and how to respect them
• Perform in front of an audience
• Know how they can help their environment
• Ride a bike
• Experience customs from various religions
• Play in a riverbed
• Go pond-dipping
• Recite poetry
• Learn how to code
• Grow and harvest fruits and vegetables
• Be part of a House
• Participate in Sports Day
• Handle a range of animals and insects