““I think, at a child’s birth, if a parent could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”
”
For 2022 Curiosity in the Classroom returned whereby our Creative Associates Cathy, Han and Louis visited 6 schools around the country.
The premise was that a time-travelling viking named Astrid had become trapped in our time. She told stories of where she had been and what she had seen and the many amazing artefacts that she had discovered. To make the time machine work again it needed to use the power of story. But no ordinary stories. It had to be the children’s stories, the ones about the artefacts that Astrid had found…
Overview: This year’s Curiosity in the Classroom programme took place over two zoom visits and one filming day. Before the first zoom session each school had their class put into groups. They created stories around the artefacts that were sent to them by Mrs Bench (London Museum of Artefacts) and Astrid (time-travelling Viking). A second zoom visit saw the children tell the stories that they had been working on. And then our team of Creative Associates visited each school to film every group’s curious tales which were acted out by the children. Each film was made using green screen, so that we could add atmosphere and context and of course any directions and imput from the children.
Here is a carousel of photos from those visits from Astrid and Ms Bench…
The schools that participated this year were:
Bethany CE VA Junior School, Bournemouth, Dorset.
Scunthorpe C of E Primary School, Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire.
St John’s Church of England Primary School, Shildon, Co Durham.
St Marys C of E Primary School, Brent, London.
The Bishop’s Primary Academy, Thetford, Norfolk..
Emmaus Catholic and C of E Primary School, Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
We would like to thank all the teachers in all of the above schools and Cathy Walker, Hannah Roze-Lewis and Louis Saxby for all their hard work, good humour and belief in making Curiosity in the Classroom such a great event for the children. And of course our fantastic funders, The Ironmongers’ Company, Shaftesbury Place, Barbican, London EC2Y 8AA www.ironmongers.org/
Some previous Curiosity events and people
Keynote Inspiration
2022’s keynote inspiration for the conference was author, Sam Gayton. He made us curious enough in 2017 with his keynote and despite the late cancellation of 2020, even more curious to get him back again…
“But... it's one of those laws of the universe, isn't it? Nothing stays the same. Things change.”
― Sam Gayton
Sam was the visiting author at the Curiosity Conference back in 2017 and almost 2020. He made everyone so curious that we invited him back! He lives by the sea in Margate. His first book, The Snow Merchant was published in 2009.
He loves Italian food, drinking tea, being on the alert for Zombies, strumming his guitar and joining as many rock bands as possible. He has written 9 novels and is curious at just about everything.
Since his first book, Sam has had three more books published in the UK all with Andersen Press, Lilliput, Hercufleas and his most recent, His Royal Whiskers. Sam is currently working on this 5th book, The Last Zoo was published in March 2019. He also writes for the Oxford Reading Tree series.
If you would like to find out more about Sam you can do so via his website: www.samgayton.com
See Sam's welcome message to the Curiosity 2020 schools below...
Curiosity in the Classroom
Instead of the usual conference in 2019 we decided with the schools and the Ironmongers’ Company’s input on a project called ‘Curiosity in the Classroom’. All the work for this was carried out at each individual school’s premises giving the children an experience of the Curiosity idea in the familiar surroundings of their own schools. With this new concept Year 5 pupils received three visits from MakeBelieve Arts as they did before but on the third visit this time they presented their Curiosities to their own school, to an invited audience of parents/carers, governors, teachers, press and pupils. It was a huge success and equipped with the experience of Curiosity in the Classroom everyone is looking forward to the conference returning to the Ironmongers’ Hall in 2020.
