Earlyarts wins major Paul Hamlyn Foundation award

Earlyarts, the flagship professional development network for professionals working creatively with young children and families, has been awarded £75,000 from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to support its national growth programme.

Earlyarts provides a range of professional development resources, for the arts, cultural and early education sector working to help families with young children achieve a better quality of life and learning. These include a 6-weekly ebulletin with news, training, latest research and events across the globe; an online resource bank with links to policy initiatives, research, and creative programmes; Brief Builder - a project planning and evaluation toolkit; and an early years artists database. Earlyarts also runs four Professional Development Days per year to develop creative skills, and improve the quality of early years practice.

The Paul Hamlyn award will enable Earlyarts to establish its new national Pathfinder Programme over the next three years, achieving a sustainable future by building self-funding networks throughout each region. Each Pathfinder Partner will deliver Earlyarts highly popular Professional Development Days across all regions, ensuring that every professional that works with children and families will be able to access creative training in their area. The national programme will result in joining up good practice across the country to meet the needs of young children and families in a more integrated way.

Chair of Earlyarts Advisory Board and Childrens Centre Director, Nathan Archer, said, ‘We are thrilled to have received this award and look forward to working closely with Paul Hamlyn, who have been incredibly supportive of our vision. By taking an opportunity-focussed approach, Earlyarts has gone from strength to strength over the last eighteen months, despite the current climate, and its wonderful to have this recognised. We want to continue to harness the strengths of our partners across the country, all of whom have the potential to make huge differences to the lives of many children.

Earlyarts started in 2002 in response to research showing the isolated nature of many creative early years projects and the lack of longer term support for this work. Earlyarts provides key services to drive up standards in creative practice with young children and families, from information sharing and online resources to connecting providers through inspiring professional development programmes.

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