Background
Tees Valley museums is a consortium of seven venues across five local authorities of Stockton, Middlesbrough. Redcar, Hartlepool and Darlington. Together, Tees Valley Museums are committed to delivering quality learning experiences for those in formal education, and to provide professional support in the form of projects, CPD and materials to teachers and educators.
Our existing Literacy Loans and Museum in Your Classroom programmes bring real museum objects directly into schools. These programmes have become a valued resource for teachers seeking to embed cross curricular cultural learning into everyday classroom practice.
This new project builds on this success with a specific focus on improving oracy skills—particularly for boys in primary classrooms, where confidence in speaking and communication can be noticeably lower. In this programme, participating primary schools will receive a museum object in their classroom and will benefit from support from a dedicated creative practitioner in the classroom.
The Idea
Tees Valley Museums will appoint five creative practitioners to work in five schools across the Tees Valley. Each creative practitioner will work alongside the museum teams and class teachers to plan and deliver a series of lessons to support English, in particular oracy, attainment within the school. The chosen objects will be identified as those which will appeal to the boys in the class in particular and will fit in with the teacher’s topic planning.
The Creative Practitioner will act as a link creative, generating and delivering class lessons linked to the museum object, working closely with one class per half term, and will work with five different museum objects throughout the school year 2026/7.
TVMG recognises that improvement in English, in particular oracy, can be supported in a multitude of ways. This can include writers, storytellers, animators, performers, actors, film makers and more.
It will be anticipated that the creatives will be allocated to work in schools across the Tees Valley, a different school per half term.
The Process
Tees Valley Museums will recruit five creative practitioners with a diverse skillset to take on the role of a link creative. The link creative will liaise closely with the school and museum to plan lessons. The link creative will spend the equivalent of four days in one class each half term, this can be sub divided into half days as required and additional time will be allocated for planning time with the class teacher.
TVMG will:
- Oversee the success of each individual project.
- Support partner museums and schools to develop a secure loan agreement.
- Recruit appropriate schools to the project and identify key staff to oversee the project in each school
- Recruit creative practitioners to the project, and attach to schools
- Plan and host regular steering group meetings
- Be the point of contact with linking up appropriate museum objects with schools
- Provide support through the community curators where appropriate to enable access to museum objects to classes
- Support with the project evaluation
Partner Museums Will:
- Work with the school to identify appropriate loans for a classroom
- Attend half termly steering group meetings
- Offer support through the learning teams to share their rich knowledge around the loaned objects.
- Host school visits where appropriate
- Support with the evaluation of the project
Link Creatives will:
- Liaise closely with the class teacher to plan and deliver class lessons to support class English
- Attend an introductory session learning about oracy and museum objects
- Attend half termly steering group meetings
- Support with project evaluation
- Act as a link between the school and museum
Schools (SLT and class teacher) will:
- Share their school planning and support with identification of appropriate loans objects
- Class
- Work with the link creative to schedule and plan lessons.
- Liaise with museums to ensure all loans are housed safely and securely
- Provide support from SLT or literacy leads to embed this project throughout the school
- Attend half termly steering group meetings
- Support with the evaluation of the project.
Timeline
November 2026: Recruitment of link creatives
Successful creatives must be available for a training day at Hopeton Darlington on Monday 7th December 2026.
December 2026 : Link creatives and school initial planning
January 2027-July 2027: Creatives to work in school. They will work in one class per half term across five half terms, planning and scheduling with the class teachers at the end of each half term for the term ahead. The first half term will be spent embedding this structure into the school’s planning
Fees
Total fees £1825 per creative per term, £7300 to work within one school per term across four terms of this academic year, ending July 2027.
Fee covers:
4 days of delivery per half-term (5 no.) (at £280 per day/£145 per 1/2 day per Creative).
1 planning per half-term with teaching & museum staff (at £280 per day per Creative).
1 day meetings per half-term (5 no.) (at £280 per day per Creative).
1/2 day evaluator support per half-term (at £145 per 1/2 day per Creative).
Total £7300 for the 4 terms up to end of July 2027
Application process:
Please e-mail with an up-to-date CV and covering detailing your skills and experiences working in primary school settings, in particular how your skillset could support oracy and engage boys. Please include any relevant experiences working with historic objects and stories to inspire and engage students in order to develop their English language skills. You should also include any experiences of working with teachers for an extended period.
Please also include any initial ideas and approaches that you might take to support children to engage in English using museum objects. Further ideas around how you might deliver this to a class should also be included. Please include any links to your website or previous projects.
The successful applicants will be required to provide an up to date DBS certificate alongside their Public Liability Insurance certificate.
For further details and information please e-mail : simon.overington-hickford@stockton.gov.uk
The deadline for applications is 11.30PM Sunday 22nd November 2026.
