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Abstract
This article reports on the first year of a fortnightly ‘creative arts’ morning, instituted by a primary school to bring more balance into the curriculum, which the staff saw as dominated by National Curriculum, and especially literacy and numeracy requirements. Through increasing and unrelenting demands, creativity and the arts had become suppressed in the school. The initiative was evaluated using qualitative research methods involving observation, discussion and study of documents. It was found that there were significant educational benefits in the creative arts mornings, especially in the areas of generating positive emotions, the cultivation of social relationships among both staff and children, the development of pupil skills and creativity, and heightened teacher morale. The initial aims were all achieved in part, though some more fully than others. The article concludes with a discussion of possible longer-term aims and the principles on which they might be based.
