Artist Call Out - Early Years Development Commission

Between 2018 -2023, Inspire has been working to enhance our offer in libraries for early years children and their families. 

Early Years Programme: Inspireculture.org.uk/inspiringearlyyears

Inspire secured Arts Council funding to develop early years visual arts. In 2018 early years specialist consultants were commissioned to train a team of five artists. The artists worked to adapt their arts practice to be suitable for the early years. They went on to deliver workshops in early years settings and libraries with families to test and improve the offer, as a piece of action research.

This resulted in a programme of Little Creatives workshops for children aged from 2 - 5 and the team have been working creatively to help early years' children learn new skills and have multi-sensory creative experiences since.

Little Creatives: Inspireculture.org.uk/littlecreatives

The current Little Creatives workshop programme ended in March 2023, and we are now looking for a new team of artists to work with our local communities.  

Inspire will commission experts in early years education to train and mentor the selected team who will go on to create and deliver the next programme of visual arts activity in libraries for children and families. 

We are looking for five artists to take part in early years training and work together to develop their understanding, skills and experience in the early years. The Little Creatives project will broaden access to the arts and:

• Be based on the best practice in early years education
• Build knowledge of the early years’ curriculum and its relationship with the creative process
• Include action research into engaging with very young children
• Explore developmental milestones and identify activities that will help children achieve them
• Stimulate creativity
• Stimulate reading
• Provide parents/carers with tools to engage with under-fives in art activities and reading and enhance our existing library programmes
• Offer artists opportunities to gain further experience by running creative workshops
• Work with Inspire and in partnership with other artists to develop our Little Creatives project, sharing skills and experience
• Work with Inspire to create legacy resources

Project time scale:

• Artists receive training from early years specialists from October 2023
• Artists deliver explorative creative workshops in Inspire Library settings in different Nottinghamshire districts, dates and settings to be decided
• Artists Legacy resources to be developed from the programme by 2024/25 to be on loan in Inspire Libraries by 2025/26

For information all our libraries are listed here:

Our Libraries | Inspire - Culture, Learning, Libraries (inspireculture.org.uk)

Submissions should be made by 9am on Monday 4 September 2023 to arts@inspireculture.org.uk

Download the full call out information here, you can choose the format you prefer:

• WORD Document - 2023 Early Years and Visual Arts Development Commission - Early Years Artist Brief
• PDF - 2023 Early Years and Visual Arts Development Commission - Early Years Artist Brief
• HTML Website - 2023 Early Years and Visual Arts Development Commission - Early Years Artist Brief 
• BSL - 2023 Early Years and Visual Arts Development Commission - Early Years Artist Brief
• AUDIO - 2023 Early Years and Visual Arts Development Commission - Early Years Artist Brief 

You must be available for professional development / training on the following dates:

Tuesday 3 and Tuesday 10 October 2023, 9.30am - 1pm Training with Ann Langston, Early Years Matters (online via Teams).

Tuesday 24 October 2023, 10am – 4pm Training with Playground Project Artists, Kent Libraries at Beeston Library.

Additional training opportunities and mentoring sessions will be arranged for the selected artists, all additional training dates tbc. You would be expected to attend all training sessions.

Please use arts@inspireculture.org.uk email address if you have any questions or need us to make any adjustments for receiving your ideas.

And finally

We are committed to attracting and recruiting diverse candidates and welcome applications from underrepresented groups.

If you require Inspire to make any reasonable adjustments to the process of receiving your ideas and make it more accessible for you, please contact: arts@inspireculture.org.uk

Thank you for taking the time to review this brief.

This project is part of our Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation funded work.