A Media Arts Specialism

 We are extremely proud of our Media Arts specialist status that is producing raised attainment, increased curricular and extra curricular choices for our students, specialist resources, equipment and training for our teachers and specialist learning opportunities for our community. 

Our partner schools, primary, secondary and special, have also benefited from our specialism.  Our specialist identity is apparent throughout the school as media arts approaches flow into the wider curriculum.  We are contributing to the media literacy of all our students and the quality of their production work is outstanding as they embrace new media and digital technology.  Creativity is firmly placed at the heart of our ethos and our operations. We actively encourage staff, students and all learners within our community to explore the imaginative and creative use of new technologies, to develop innovative and exciting ways to learn, celebrating a media arts ethos which challenges, motivates and inspires.  

 A key factor in our success as a Media Arts Specialist School thus far has been our unique Key Stage 3 Media Arts Curriculum, which promotes high levels of media literacy by the end of Y9 for all our students. There are currently nine subject areas involved in its delivery and students work thematically across the curriculum to explore Emotions (Y7), Issues (Y8) and Gothic Horror (Y9), producing stunning outcomes including films, photographs, websites and performances to show their learning. We actively encourage our students to showcase their production work via our website and at regional level and several of our students have had significant success in national competitions such as Boom and BeCreative.

 The Media Arts team supports teachers and students in their own subject based classrooms. There have been many successful curriculum based projects, including news broadcasts, podcasts, documentaries, performances, textile and product design and foreign language films. Our Media Production Team films and produces edits of specific events around school. Increasingly, we are embedding opportunities for our students to work with Media Arts practitioners on curriculum projects.

The specialist Media Arts and IT facilities provided at the school are second to none. Besides over 450 IT workstations, the school can boast media production facilities that are state of the art including mac laptops, a recording studio and professional standard software. The teachers and students who use these facilities are supported by a dedicated team, some of whom have had experience working in the media industry.