Earlyarts - your children are amazing

Morning Venue: The Storey Creative Industries Centre, Meeting House Lane, Lancaster, LA1 1TH (Directions here)

Afternoon Venue: Appletree Children’s Centre, Milking Stile Lane, Lancaster, LA1 5QB (Directions here)

Theme: Getting Active! – A focus on 'get up and go' activities for young children.

For: Artists, early years practitioners, heads of centres, cultural managers, local authority advisors, early years professionals, arts or cultural organisations.

Programme:

9.30 Refreshments Available

10.00 Earlyarts Welcome – to include 'where are we now and where are we going to?'

10.30 A celebration of creative provision of good practice in South Cumbria and North Lancashire – presentations and discussions on local creative projects for early years

11.30 Earlyarts Knowledge – speed networking, key events coming up in the sector, review of the latest research and publications.

12.00 Networking - LUNCH. Please bring sandwiches or money for the cafe.

13.00 Change of venue and tour of Appletree Children's Centre

13.30 CPD Workshops – two practical, outdoor sessions, each one hour long, underpinned with latest theory – please bring appropriate clothing

Boogie Books – led by Cath Hill, exploring popular children's literature and story telling through dance and movement*

Large scale construction in outdoor space – further information to follow*

15.30 Sharing Experiences/Feedback, learning journeys and delivery plans.

16.00 Dates of next meetings and Finish.

*Afternoon Workshops:

Workshop 1

Boogie Books – This practical session, introduces Appletree Children's Centre's successful 'Boogie Books' group, which is aimed at 2 – 5 years olds and their families. The session, led by Cath Hill, explores popular children's literature and story telling through dance and movement, with the aim of developing children's speech and language skills. This workshop will be led outside in the community garden – weather permitting.

Cath Hill – Cath graduated with a degree in Dance Theatre from the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance. She toured with Ludus Dance Company as part of their performance company for four years. She then went on to be head of their Dance Development Department, which involved fundraising, initiating and delivering community dance projects in Lancashire and the North West with a team of dance artists. As part of this role, she was also Lancashire County Dance Development officer.

After a break in her career to have children, Cath, returned to work as a freelance artist, specialised in delivering dance and movement workshops to under fives and their parents. In partnership with Appletree Children's Centre, she has developed family dance sessions called 'Boogie Books', which use dance and children's literature, to promote and develop speech and language skills in pre-school children. Cath has recently started a new job at Appletree as an outreach worker and as part of this role, will continue to lead the centre's dance and movement groups.

Workshop 2

Large scale construction in outdoor space – This practical session will gather ideas of good practice to share amongst the group, explain different concepts of space – working with and within, and explore space without mark makers:

• arm yoga/brain gym wake up body
• movement to music
• ribbons sticks
• nark making tools

and explore space with mark makers:

• different tools on bamboo
• sponges on rackets etc.
• individual pieces on big paper
• swapping tools

Sara Bradley -  Sara has been an Early Years teacher for 4 years (working in pure and mixed FS/Y1 classes) and she currently work at Dallas Road where she is also Art Subject Leader, Leading CLLD teacher (Early literacy) and EAL (English as an Additional Language Co-ordinator). Sara studied art to university level on the 4 yr BA hons with QTS and is mainly a painter/printer.