Architecture for kids podcast with Hannah Peaty Assistant Head Teacher Soho Parish Primary School

I love working with children and being able to contribute to their growth- seeing them develop and flourish as individuals. Their creativity and imagination always inspires and delights. Every day in school is different and full of surprises and a new creative challenge!

Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

you

SPEAKER_02: 0:09

Hello and welcome to another episode of Architecture for Kids podcast. I'm your host, António Cablão. I'm a trained architect, an architectural educator and founding director of award-winning Architecture for Kids CIC. In this podcast, I'm going to talk to practitioners and creatives that share the same passion as I do, to inspire and to engage children and young people to shape their built environment and the creative industries. The podcast is brought to you in collaboration with the Built Environment Trust, the Thornton Education Trust and the Wells School of Architecture, Cardiff University. My guest today is Anna Pitti, assistant headteacher at Soho Parish Primary School in Soho, London. She has been working at the school since 2012 and is responsible for curriculum implementation as well as leading on art and design. She supported the school to work towards and achieve the prestigious Artsmark Platinum Award in 2020. Having a background in art with a BA Fine Art degree and an MA History of Art, Architecture and Archaeology, she is passionate about introducing children to a wide range of art and design opportunities during their time at primary school. She helped to set up and to run the Soho Kids Christmas Lights project in Soho, London, co-produced since 2021 by award-winning Architecture for Kids CIC and now in its third Being an accredited mindfulness teacher for both children and adults, she is specially interested in the relationship between the arts and well-being and has embedded mindfulness into the school curriculum as part of their well-being offer. Anna has been nominated for the Thornton Education Trust Inspiring Future Generations Awards 2023, Architecture into Education Teacher of the Year, Key Stages 1 and 2 category. Anna, thank you for coming to talk to me today and I'm looking forward to our conversation.

SPEAKER_00: 2:18

Hi Antonio, it's lovely to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

SPEAKER_02: 2:20

What was your favourite subject at school and what were you good at? I

SPEAKER_00: 2:25

always loved being creative, so art was definitely my favourite subject at primary and secondary school. I went on to do a fine art degree and a Masters in History of Art and Archaeology. It was definitely something I pursued during my time at school and beyond.

SPEAKER_02: 2:38

What you were good at and what you liked was actually something that followed through as you started and your career?

SPEAKER_00: 2:43

Yes, I've always just kept kind of stepping into what next with my creative kind of journey. I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was younger, but I just kept following my interests and that's kind of led to where I am today. So obviously I'm a primary school teacher in a central London primary school. I'm a senior leader at the school and also the art lead, class-based for a long time. I'm not anymore. I'm now in charge of kind of the arts at school. But yeah, so I'm really, really pleased that I've been able to kind of focus on that as it's always been my kind of passion and interest.

SPEAKER_02: 3:12

And You also run a mindfulness class at school, yes?

SPEAKER_00: 3:16

Yes, I've embedded mindfulness into our curriculum at Soho Parish over the last seven years, something that I'm really passionate about as well as a mindfulness practitioner and teacher. And so, yeah, the two things that are really important to me at school are well-being and creativity. And I was quite interested in how those two things support each other as well.

SPEAKER_02: 3:33

And the mindfulness, is it just for colleagues or is it also for the kids?

SPEAKER_00: 3:38

Well, it's for everybody. It's for the whole community. And initially, I just started doing it with the children and So I've been trained to teach children doing that. And we offer 30 minutes for every class each week. We've got a designated space at school to do that with meditation mats and cushions. But I've also offered drop-ins for staff and teachers and courses, caster sessions for parents. I've run courses for parents as well. So something that can be offered to the whole school community as well. And also it's really helpful in that way, something that's not just that I'm teaching the children, that everybody can benefit.

SPEAKER_02: 4:10

I'm quite interested in mindfulness and children's How do you get them to stand still for half an hour?

SPEAKER_00: 4:15

Well, yeah, I'm not going to take them to sit or stand still for half an hour. That's definitely not the case. So within that kind of half an hour session, there'll be kind of a theme that we're exploring. We'll do a little meditation and there's lots of opportunity for kind of dialogue and exploring, yeah, exploring their experience really. So it's getting them to just develop their awareness. So that's what mindfulness is, is awareness of paying attention and noticing how they are, bringing attention to that so that they can be more, have more creative responses to life rather than being a reactive and having that kind of yeah emotional awareness and because that impacts themselves and others around them so they've responded really well not everybody takes to it obviously it's personal but it's an invitation for them and it's kind of offering them something I wished I'd been offered when I was younger as well because it had a really big impact on my life as an adult practicing mindfulness really passionate about being able to offer that to children.

SPEAKER_02: 5:02

How difficult or how easy was it to incorporate that to the curriculum?

SPEAKER_00: 5:06

That's a really interesting question because it's not part of the national curriculum but part of what we value at our school as part of our well-being office part of us being able to support children with their emotional development and their social skills as well yeah something that obviously I had to kind of advocate for and promote at school but then kind of gradually over time starting off small doing it just with my class initially showing the impact kind of gathering evidence of that and then expanding that across the school I think bringing anything kind of new into the curriculum and we have to look at kind of what is it why are we doing it and What's the impact of that? And being able to gather evidence for that as well. Over time, it's become something that everybody at the school has got on board with and deeply valued. Gather quotes from the children every year to see how it's impacted them or how it's affected them. And I'm always really kind of quite moved by some of their responses around how it's helped them and supported them to have that awareness of their thoughts and their responses to things and their relationships and all of that.

SPEAKER_02: 6:06

Can you remember any of the quotes?

SPEAKER_00: 6:08

Not quoting directly here, but children have said that they've been able to notice how their thoughts aren't always true, be able to get themselves out of those kind of worrying loops that they get into sometimes. They've improved relationships with their siblings, maybe being kind of less reactive to them, to help prepare them for SATs, so being able to help calm themselves down, things like that really, or just being able to kind of come back to their direct experience when they're feeling difficult emotions and kind of work with that. So yeah, along those kinds of lines.

SPEAKER_02: 6:38

You have brought the Arts Platinum Award to the school. Can you talk a bit about that? We

SPEAKER_00: 6:42

were awarded Artsmark Platinum Award in 2020. So we worked towards that for a couple of years and I was in charge of implementing that and making that happen. And it was a really great process to take part in. And as part of that, we were looking at developing partnerships with outside arts organisations and also developing people voice. So we initially worked with the London Transport Museum on a project and we created an arts council. who were able to plan and develop our art week at Soho Parish. They went to the museum, they gathered ideas, they presented them back at a staff meeting to teachers and helped teachers to plan our art week on a specific theme which was journeys that year to link to the London Transport Museum and they developed this project which we now model that every year so we model that kind of structure of how we create our art week every year through pupil voice and participation working with a different museum or arts organisation each year and that really effective and then I led CPD for other teachers on how they could do a similar project. We were also looking at having a wider impact outside of our school so supporting other schools in that journey. I would really advocate for taking part in Artsmark because it really helps you to kind of look at what you're doing really well in school and celebrating that but also thinking about how you can improve and I think it's always important to be doing both of those things to acknowledging where you are but also what you want to go and develop as well.

SPEAKER_02: 8:04

You are a very progressive school walking into a classroom where the kids were sitting in balls. There was the cushions. Really, really exciting to see how much you were interested in creating a comfortable environment and an environment where the kids felt at home, that they fully engaged with their studies.

SPEAKER_00: 8:23

I just wanted to say something more about that. Yeah, so what you're talking about is a flexible seating. And, you know, if we think about ourselves as adults, like we choose how we are comfortable to work, like especially now, you know, working environments become a bit more flexible, haven't they, of working at home? or in an office or in kind of shared spaces and so we wanted to kind of offer that to children as well like you know not all children need the same things for their focus and their concentration so you know some children might want to lie down while they're writing others might want to sit on and move a bit while they're listening so being able to kind of bounce on a ball that they're sitting on or maybe sit in a comfy chair others want to stand up while they're writing things like that so you know we tried that out for a couple of years in different classrooms and it worked really well and you know it is something that we were thinking would be great to kind of do across the school but just funding for that was not really possible at the moment but yeah it's thinking about what helps children to learn and to focus and develop and grow and to the best of their ability and how can we support that.

SPEAKER_02: 9:24

The school does a lot of projects to engage its pupils with the built environment. Do you want to talk about that?

SPEAKER_00: 9:30

We've been on a bit of a journey with doing architectural awareness projects which has been really important so I just want to start by saying that about the the national curriculum because it does actually state in the Key Stage 2 aims that children need to know about great artists and craft makers and designers and understand the cultural and historical impact of that and architects are actually mentioned in that as well for Key Stage 2. I think we're always open to exploring with different professionals about how they can bring their expertise into school because there are certain areas that we're not experts on when we're teaching so we want to expose children to a wide range of different creative industries and skills and knowledge. And we do that through developing a really rich and varied curriculum. But at the same time, there are specific things that is, you know, it's really important to get outsiders in and professionals to be able to work with the children and share that expertise. And I think architecture is one of one of those areas. So I remember when you came and met me, I think it might have been 2018 or 19 to talk about the work you do. And yeah, I'm just really open minded when people come and talk to me really excited about kind of potential projects and partnerships and thinking about how we can bring that into our curriculum and provide opportunities for the children that's kind of developed over time really so initially you came and did some work with our year five class and did an architectural awareness project and they redesigned part of their classroom and thought about their learning space again really important to carry on from what we're talking about about what helps them to learn and yeah you've done that with a couple of classes now but the biggest thing we've done is our so kids Christmas lights competition project which is in its third year running now and that's just been fantastic it's been so good to for the school to be part of something so big a community based project that kind of brings everybody together and for the children to so just to describe the project briefly that the children get to work with Antonio and Reba so we've got lots of people on board and we do workshops with the children at architectural awareness projects around the theme of kind of identity of place and that's but there's been a different theme each year so we had food was one year then this year's been fashion and so really thinking about their local environment and their place in it which has been really connecting as well and so they really focused on that and then they designed Christmas lights for the streets of Soho and we select some of those each year about 14 each year I think we've selected haven't we and they get made into Christmas lights which go up on the in the streets and then we have a big celebration event a big light switch on yeah and it's just really been fantastic for their self-esteem for kind of recognising themselves as artists that you know they're sharing their work in a public space and really understanding that process and how lighting is part of the built environment which I don't think they would have seen that as a as architecture before or maybe they didn't have that awareness so I think that's been really important and yeah I think that's just over time again it's what I was saying earlier that things grow over time don't they and we also were able to our PTA were really generous to fund a project with you as well which was our enrichment project where you were doing an architecture awareness club with the children as well And then off the back of all of that, as I'm coming back to talk about our annual art week, I always consult our student arts counsellors about what theme they want. And this year they wanted the theme of building the city. So thinking about the built environment and they wanted to go to Reba Learning. So that was their choice. I didn't kind of initiate that. I think one of them had been with their pair and really liked it and wanted to suggest that as a theme and we did a vote on what the theme would be and yeah so the whole school went on trips on trips there and our art week this year was called building the city and all of our art projects were kind of based on that and we had things like tower building and looking at colour in the built environment and made 3D structures 2D paintings and kind of pop-up landscapes we even kind of designed cities out of food landscapes all kinds of creative ways of looking at that And that was down to them having this much more awareness of architecture and kind of looking around them and seeing the built environment, expressing their ideas and imagination around that. And so that's fantastic, I think, that you can kind of see that impact over time.

SPEAKER_02: 14:23

The exhibition looked amazing. I was really impressed when I saw the exhibition you put together. You also, all the other professions that you bring in, so writers, artists and engineers, I think. Tell us a little bit more about this project.

SPEAKER_00: 14:36

As I said, it's really really important to get in kind of specialists in different areas so for instance during different art weeks we'll always get somebody to come in and do workshops with the children obviously we've had someone come in and do stone carving before this year as part of the architecture week we had an architect come in and build huge structures in the hall and out of long sticks and thinking about structure and you know we didn't don't have the materials for that or the expertise ourselves we've worked with a company called primary features who are really helpful who are have a big kind of resource of people who are willing to volunteer their time and come in and talk to children about their professions so we've had assemblies in the past where we've had people from different industries come in and share about their work so you know it's giving children the awareness that these different careers are out there that things they've never even heard of and because I wasn't aware of any of that when I was younger so I think that's really important we've had professional poets come in and authors sharing their work with the children and we have pair who have creative industries or artists or architects, you know, coming in and talking to the children as well. So it's having that connection with somebody they know and being inspired and motivated by all of the adults in their community and just knowing that those different options are out there. I think it's really, really important.

SPEAKER_02: 15:55

And in terms of the parents, how do they react to this experiment?

SPEAKER_00: 15:59

Yeah, so our parent community are really, really supportive of all of the work we do. And yeah, we have a really supportive PTS and the Parent Teacher Association that fund a lot of those kind of extra projects because funding is always, it's difficult to find the money for things like, you know, for workshops and projects like that. So yeah, we're really lucky that they're really generous around that. But yeah, I often have parents come up to me on the gate and say, oh, I've just met with somebody around the corner who's really interested in working with you or I've just gone into this exhibition. I think the children would really love it. or I've heard that there's this arts organisation or there's a theatre you know they're always kind of on the lookout for opportunities so you know they want their child to be able to experience that but they also really want the whole wider school to be able to experience things like that so we have loads of supportive parents who are often kind of informing me of things and I say great put me in touch or send me an email about it so I'm always really open to kind of hearing about what's on offer so yeah we have a really supportive school community in that respect and the parents always come along and celebrate the children's work and yeah just really supportive around all of that.

SPEAKER_02: 17:17

The community itself a lot of the businesses in Soho and people in general they're also very keen in supporting the school. It's amazing that right in the middle of Soho you have a primary school which almost you know a lot of Londoners don't even know about.

SPEAKER_00: 17:33

Yeah and I think you know it's a community Soho isn't it? It's quite And, you know, we had a meeting with some restaurant owners and local people to think about how can we support each other for the Soho Christmas Lights project, for instance. And, yeah, there's just a real willingness to understand, I think, what we all need and what would be helpful and people just be really willing to say, like, how can we help? What can we do? And to kind of come together. And I think that was really evident when we had our switch on events over the last couple of years as well, where we've had local businesses. and support us, offer venues, offer refreshments, all of that kind of thing. It's just been great. So I think, yeah, it's just making those connections with people and kind of maintaining them and looking out for each other and seeing how we can support each other because, yeah, the children, lots of the children do live in the area or not too far away. So, you know, they're all part of that community and they want to contribute to it. That's one of our school values is community. So we're thinking about how they can contribute the local community more as well.

SPEAKER_02: 18:38

In regards to the Solo Kids Christmas Lights project, I was very taken as well with the generosity of the community and the business owners and people in general trying to help and parents and of course the school was open-minded to accept the proposal of the project, the kids engaged, but financially it's quite an expensive project and everybody pulls together to find the resources, Westminster Council, the business owners, so it's fantastic and all the parents always, when they find me and say, OK, so what do you need? Where can I, you know, talk to this person? A bit like what you were saying. And that's really exciting and hopeful and it helps bring things together. What's the next art project or next workshop? What do you have planned?

SPEAKER_00: 19:20

We're re-embarking on our Artsmark journey again. So the award that we gained only lasts for two years. So we're starting that journey again. And something that I'm quite excited about is doing some partnerships projects with another school. I think for the children to be able to share what's worked well in our school so our arts council may be going to another school and working with them helping them on their art smart journey developing maybe an arts council there working collaboratively so collaboration for me is kind of my buzzword at the moment for thinking about how we can collaborate with another school but also with other arts organisations and I think it's really important that I don't have a kind of fixed idea about that there's this I have a kind of seed of interest and excitement around that but I really want to see how that could develop and grow so that's where I'm at at the moment and kind of thinking beyond our school about how we can have an impact either in the community or in another school supporting an arts organisation some description just to give you an example actually that we worked with the National Gallery last year our Arts Council and they worked as kind of consultants supporting the architects there to design or give ideas for designing their new education so So they really wanted to see what, you know, for children who are coming into that space and learning in that space, you know, what would they want? What would work for them? And we did a whole project around that with our arts counsellors and working with their architects. So it's not, I think something that's really, really important is not just how adults and their professional expertise can support the students, but also that open mindedness to think, well, how can children support us in our creative industries and helping us to to design workshops or spaces or whatever it is for children. So not kind of second guessing what we think they need, but actually asking them. So I think pupil voice is incredibly important. So yeah, that's something I'm really interested in is how children and adults can support each other in that way as well.

SPEAKER_02: 21:26

What was the reaction from the kids? How did they react to this project at the National Gallery?

SPEAKER_00: 21:30

initially they they weren't didn't really know what they they were doing I think you know we were offering them an opportunity and it was through doing that that they saw how important what they were doing actually was so it's about you know harnessing their imagination and creativity so like very the National Gallery very skilled at doing that of like of holding a space where they could explore ask the right questions get the children to to think about and think about spaces and how they're used because if you just asked a child they probably wouldn't be able to think about that necessarily without the guidance and the correct questioning and that kind of thing but you know they used paintings at the National Gallery looking at spaces of learning in historical paintings and how people were using spaces and then that kind of was a starting point to kind of ignite their imagination around their own spaces and they got to create models of their ideal learning space and they really could be as imaginative and creative as they wanted with that and there weren't any parameters and then they got to present those ideas to the wider team at the National Gallery so I think it was really confidence building and you know really developing their self-esteem around that and thinking you know what I have to say really matters and it's valued and I think that's such a valuable thing for young people to feel that they're heard and that their thoughts and their feelings matter and And yeah, so I think that's been really great. And they've been invited to, yeah, to kind of go and interview the architects now as the project has progressed as well. So yeah, it'd be really exciting for them to see the finished space and see how some of their ideas might have kind of come into fruition as well.

SPEAKER_02: 23:19

And what is the typical day at school?

SPEAKER_00: 23:21

Typical day would be children arrive into the classroom and have an opportunity to kind of talk to each other, engage in a bit of learning to start with. And then we have an assembly So we're a church-winning school. So we have active worship every day. So we have an assembly. And then typically children would probably do English and maths in the morning. And then the afternoon we have all the different foundation subjects. That would be like history, geography, art, science, design technology, all of those different subjects. And sometimes obviously we go on trips. So we'll go out and use the resources in the local area or go further afield so we might do that or at the moment we've got we've got a theatre project doing a radio project with our year sixes so they've kind of taken over a space and they've written a radio play with the year six class who are going out and recording that so there's often things like that happening around the school so we've got our kind of standard day of our timetable but yeah we're flexible with that and we adapt it and we think about how we can bring in extra things to enhance the curriculum and thinking about you know how we want to meet those kind of aims of the national curriculum but in different creative ways as well so that's just an example of something that's happening at the moment and yeah there'll be trips to the theatre as well after school clubs and creative things that children can explore so we've got like a rock band which is quite unique to our school not sure of other primary schools that do that so that's quite an exciting thing that we offer obviously we've had the architect project as well we have a choir we have an art club I've been doing arts awards with the children as well where they work towards a nationally recognised award so I was running that as an after school club so we have things like that as well so we've got the curriculum and then we've also got the extracurricular things as well and thinking about where we bring in all of that creativity

SPEAKER_02: 25:25

How do they engage? Is it quite easy to get them on board doing things or how does that process sort of work?

SPEAKER_00: 25:32

Well this has been a kind of key thing that I've been thinking about so over the last couple of years I've kind of redesigned our art curriculum as the art lead and I really have thought about how we develop children's skills and knowledge over time and also expose them to a wide range of different art forms and skills and seeing the progression of that so that's something that I've thought about with designing our art curriculum but what's really important within that is that children are feeling confident to have a go to make mistakes to try again that it's not about kind of getting it right or wrong it's about just expressing themselves trying something out something I've always I've incorporate into kind of a six week scheme of lessons is to always have a lesson where they get to experiment and play with materials so you know if they're being given some clay you know they want to be able to try it out and play with it before they do practice as the skill that you're trying to teach so I think it's really important that they get a chance to just explore and experiment a bit as well so and kind of harness that excitement that kind of inspiration so that yeah and then encouraging them to you know they're going to have the opportunity to kind of innovate and develop their work in their own way but we need to give them the skills so that that's the foundation for them to be able to then do that later on so I'm quite explicit about kind of saying we're doing this and this is why we're doing it and then once you've got the skills then you can apply them in different ways and kind of inspiring them and showing different artists work as well so yeah I think that's something I've seen from feedback when we've done an art week for instance so we do an art week for a whole week the children do art across the whole week and they work across the school in different age groups with different teachers kind of changing workshops each day and they just love it they absolutely love it love being you know being able to apply themselves creatively every day and develop skills over the week support children in different age groups to develop their skills and yeah and then celebrate the end of the week with a big exhibition so yeah I think it's really important that children never feel that they're not good at art because there's so many adults I've met that say I can't do art or I'm never really good at art or I can't draw and it's like it's not about that it's about harnessing that kind of love of just exploring and that curiosity and the process. It doesn't have to be about the outcome always. It's about the process and enjoying that process of learning and growing.

SPEAKER_01: 28:12

Is that a question I should have asked you that I haven't asked you? And what is that question?

SPEAKER_00: 28:16

I guess that I have a question, but it's not really a question for me. I think it's a question I'm kind of turning outwards really is to do with along this line of children's voices is that how can children also support the creative industries? So, you know, how can children, you know, how could that collaborative process kind of unfold? And that might become something that's quite new for different people to think about, you know, working collaboratively in that way. So it's not just what can we offer to children, but what can they offer to us? And that kind of mutual conversation and support. So, yeah, I think it's more that a question I'm just putting out there rather than a question from both Antonia Thank you for inviting me. It was a really interesting conversation.

SPEAKER_02: 29:03

Thank you very much to my guests today, to all the listeners. And please subscribe to Architecture for Kids podcast and leave your rating and the review. Recommend us to your friends and family. And to find out more about it, visit our websites. And please join me again next week for another episode of Architecture for Kids podcast, brought to you in collaboration with the Build Environment Trust, the Thornton Education Trust and the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University.