The Arts Societies North Wiltshire, Kington Langley and Wessex Area supported the STEAM DAY organised by Wiltshire’s Learning Resources Hub.

This day was to enable the primary school teachers, T A’s and parents to experience at first hand all the opportunities available to enhance the primary curriculum. In the past this day was designated a STEM day. That is, until the two art societies discussed with the organiser, that introducing Art to the mix and therefore creating STEAM the day would be so much better.

This was our second appearance at STEAM and our main role was to make sure the value of the arts is celebrated in schools, we demonstrated that we are funding agents for arts activities in the schools and we advertised The Arts Society.

A double pronged attack means we had one area of our stand showing what we can fund, activities we have supported in the past and to encourage schools to participate with activities that TAS Wessex Area is currently funding – Art Bytes Digital Exhibition and education activities at Roche Court Educational Trust.

Last time we were at STEAM we undertook ‘Drawing to Learn’ sessions looking at Leonardo and his experiments across a wide range of activities. Investigating through drawing and then developing into architecture, bridges, machinery etc.

This time we were looking at the connections between Maths and Art – the similar vocabulary, similar processes and how they support and inform each other in learning.

Over 50 schools turned up and the buzz of excitement was overwhelming, with Daleks and R2D2 roaming around the hall.There was a spaceman and the air ambulance was undertaking CPR next to our stand! However, even with all the exciting things on display we had a constant turnover of children wanting to learn how to make tessellations, create the illusion of 3D form using line and shading, using optical art to trick the eye and make connections with different parts of their learning in school.

They all took their pieces of work back to school to continue with them and show the rest of their class. Teachers were able to see what we were doing and again took that back to school to try out themselves. They were able to collect our information packs and contact details ready for developing future projects.

There were some very interesting discussions about the appalling squeeze on the arts in school. This was seen as such a loss of opportunity to be creative, experiment and develop motor skills that benefit the rest of children’s learning.

It was a fabulous day none the less and cost us nothing apart from the preparation time and the realisation that working with small children is exhausting! We were able to speak to teachers directly about potentially funding their projects, and persuading them to answer their emails!

Heather Leach, Chair of Kington Langley, Rosie Berry, Chairman of North Wilts & Karen Hellewell. AVR of North Wilts.