Spotlight: Focal Point x TOMA x Metal

Rooted in the art ecosystem of Southend-on-Sea, Focal Point Gallery, Metal Culture and TOMA will bring Southend artists and teachers together to radically shift the access of teachers to “creative time”, fostering inspiration, collaboration and peer learning through Creative Break Time. Twelve teachers will work with twelve local artists to co-design tools and build networks that encourage personal artistic development and generate cross-school collaboration.

Teachers continue to experience increased demands on their time, limited resources and pay, and constraints of the curriculum. Creative Break Time centres the wellbeing and developmental needs of teachers through providing time, connection and co-creation.  

The project will holistically resource teachers for their participation, allowing for sustained and long-term change in practice with embedded support from Focal Point Gallery, Metal and TOMA. Teachers and artists will have the opportunity to engage in co-authored residencies that will explore care-driven practice and how this can translate into classroom and personal explorations.

Emphasising care, rest and well-being, collaboration across schools and organisations will embrace risk and experimentation, informing the iterative development of the project. Creative Break Time will centre the perspectives and needs of Southend teachers through making, collective decisions and peer support to create deep connections between practitioners, arts organisations and schools. The project also seeks to move beyond existing divisions between teachers, connecting and collaborating with primary and secondary teachers, art specialists and teachers without arts specialisms.

Across the three years of the project, Creative Break Time will bring together artistic and educational practitioners to continue group learnings and explore creation of adaptable tools to transform creative teaching. The impact of rest and creative development on teachers’ practice, confidence and satisfaction will be examined and shared to support the case for greater focus on teacher wellbeing.

By creating spaces and time for meaningful co-authorship, Creative Break Time will seek to empower teachers across Southend to integrate art practice and teaching across their curricula, and model how slow practice and deep connection can radically liberate teachers.

Freelands Foundation is supporting Creative Break Time from 2024 to 2027. This collaboration was funded as part of the Autumn 2023 Fund, an open-call grant round supporting organisations delivering bold and innovative projects that build collaborative relationships between schools and visual art organisations that centre teachers in creative approaches to art education that inspire and engage young people. This grant round offered funding of between £50,000 and £150,000 per year, for up to three years.