Roseland Festival School Grants Update – February 2024

An important part of the charity’s mission is to advance, improve, develop and maintain public education in, and appreciation of, the arts and music in all its aspects.  We fulfil this aim by offering grants to the five local schools every year, plus small grants to individuals and groups based on the Roseland, to help with arts-related projects.

The 2022 festival facilitated grants of £350 for each of the four local primary schools and £1,250 for the senior school, The Roseland Academy, via the application process. Following the 2023 festival, given the profit made and healthy financial status of the charity going into 2024, we will be raising these figures to £500 and £2,000 respectively. Application forms have already been sent out for these. It means in total, following the 2022 festival schools received £2,650 and from the 2023 festival schools received £4,000.

Funds made available from the 2022 festival resulted in some wonderful projects. Gerrans Primary Schoolwere able to offset the cost of a minibus to take pupils to the Hall for Cornwall for a theatre experience, whilst St Mawes primary school used the funds to support a trip to Truro where the children visited the Royal Cornwall Museum and Truro Cathedral. At the cathedral the children took part in a workshop all about Cornwall. They also visited the museum where the children enjoyed the art exhibition, explored the rocks and minerals of Cornwall as well as taking some to dress up and generally have fun! Tregony Community Primary school were able to contribute to the cost of 30 new Ukuleles (£900 in total) for a new music club encouraging children to learn and play an instrument. Ukulele is now the main instrument learned in KS2 – many children have already had whole class lessons and the school has also been able to build on the initial 10 ukuleles (bought with a Roseland Festival grant) and now has a full set, so every child has one to play.Veryan C of E Primary School invited an artist to the school to enhance their topic, ending in a gallery day for parents where the children showcased their work.

The Roseland Academy used their funds to run a cross-curricular expressive arts project for The Academy and partner primary schools in the summer term, functioning as a collaborative transition arts project to help prepare primary pupils for their transition to secondary school, as well as developing their creative skills. The funding was able to engage professional visiting artists, Meier Williams and Rob Mennear, who led a series of creative workshops linking visual and performing arts. The project can be seen HERE.

We are always pleased to support young people on the Roseland with music, drama and other artistic projects.  You can find our Grants forms on our website or by contacting Nichola on info@roselandfestival.co.uk

What the Schools say:

Kate Morse, Gerrans School PTA:

“The whole school were able to visit the Hall for Cornwall to watch Christmas Pantomime of Treasure Island. It was a fantastic trip, with lots of transfixed children! A real Christmas treat and an absolutely wonderful experience to see the newly renovated Hall for Cornwall”

Miss Goodall, Head of Veryan:

“Thanks to the fantastic art grant we have been able to provide an art club to children on a weekly basis for a whole term. The uptake of this club, run by a local artist and milliner has been really good. The children benefitted from connecting with a member of our local community whom they learned new skills from and were inspired by. They also learned about a trade and skill they previously had no knowledge of, opening up a wider world of creative opportunity to them”

Cathy Palmer and Wendy Polley, Department of Design, Performance and Technology, The Roseland Academy:

“On behalf of all the schools I would like to thank you once again for funding this valuable creative project which has made a real difference to us this term – please convey our thanks to the whole committee!