News

A Scottish committee investigating the destruction of the school’s Mackintosh building says it is “extremely disappointed” the school has questioned the credibility of some witnesses. The committee has questioned whether the school did enough to prevent the blaze.

A project led by Anglia Ruskin University has received a six-figure grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to investigate the benefits for school children of creating art in nature. The initiative has found that working with artists improved pupils’ confidence and independence, particularly among children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre in York is taking shape, with plans to perform Hamlet, Henry V, The Tempest and Twelfth Night this summer. The organisers hope to replicate the success of last year’s season, which drew about 78,000 people to the site.

Former Director of the National Theatre Sir Richard Eyre has said swapping the genders of characters in the playwright’s classics ruins the flow of his work. Eyre is also concerned that iambic pentameter is not being taught in schools.

Richard Demarco, a prominent Scottish arts figure and co-founder of the Traverse Theatre, said while Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe lifted Scotland's spirits following the second world war, they now merely served to “reassure 2,000 stand-up comics they have a future”.

Researchers monitoring the progress of a Youth Music programme linking community music organisations with school music departments has concluded that students are being "taught in a way that does not connect with the music they’re actually interested in".  Evidence that children’s experience of music at school is “often disconnected from their musical lives” outside the lessons has prompted Youth Music CEO Matt Griffiths to write an open letter to Education Minister Nick Gibb, calling for a revised curriculum for teaching music.

450 items have been sold from the County Council's School Loan Collection as the service had become "less relevant to the evolving curriculum". The Council says it has insufficent resources to properly conserve the pieces in storage, and will be spending the money raised on improving the condition and public visibility of the nationally significant sculptures it still holds.