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What are Cultural Placements?
What are Cultural Placements?
Cultural Placements at Oxford Brookes University are special short placements for our final-year BA (Hons) Primary Teacher Education (PTE) trainees that take place in cultural venues in and around Oxfordshire. The placements offer our trainees immersive opportunities in alternative learning environments, encouraging reflection about cross-curricular pedagogical practice that integrates learning beyond the classroom with educationally purposeful and creative learning back at school.
Throughout the BA PTE course trainees deepen their knowledge and understanding of how to nurture cultural and creative cross-curricular learning. This involves:
Reflecting on their own cultural and creative development
Considering creativity as an essential skill, demonstrated across time and place, that is relevant across all curriculum subject areas
Examining reasons why creative skills are so vital in an increasingly automated world
The trainees consider three key conditions for nurturing creativity (Hosack Janes, 2022):
Valuing the arts in everyday life
Allowing time for experimentation and play
Providing opportunities to collaborate with others
Trainees examine:
Differences between teaching creatively and teaching for creativity (as defined by the Durham Commission, 2019)
The value of 'cultural capital' - understood and defined in the overall aims of the National Curriculum for England (updated 2015) 3.1 as 'essential knowledge they [pupils] need to be educated citizens. It [the national curriculum] introduces pupils to the best that has been thought and said, and helps engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement'.
The Cultural Placement days for academic year 2025/26 are Thursday 16 and Friday 17 October 2025
The Cultural Placement days for academic year 2025/26 are Thursday 16 and Friday 17 October 2025
Background
Background
Since the publication in 2003 of the National Primary Strategy Excellence and Enjoyment (DfES, 2003), which recommended the dissemination of 'good practice' between the museums and galleries sector and schools by establishing 'effective relationships' (p.33), Oxford Brookes University has been at the forefront of brokering such partnerships with local cultural venues. This website celebrates the longevity and importance of these partnerships.
From 2003, Oxford Brookes University BA (Hons) Primary Teacher Education trainees have undertaken Cultural Placements as part of their teacher training experience (with the exception of academic year 2020/21 due to Covid restrictions). The Cultural Placements started when Oxford Brookes University and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, were invited to be part of a programme developed by Dr Karen Hosack Janes, then Head of Schools at the National Gallery, London. The programme was Government-funded in response to the Government-commissioned report All Our Futures (NACCCE, 1999). One of the objectives of the programme was to build sustainable links between teacher training providers and regional museums and galleries. This website demonstrates that regional cultural partnerships with Oxford Brookes University continue to be strong and evolve, over twenty years after the Cultural Placements were first piloted.
Oxford Brookes University is extrememly grateful for the ongoing support of our regional cultural partners, who offer the Cultural Placements to our trainee primary school teachers free of charge.
If you need any of the information or documentation from this site in a different format, please contact the Partnerships & Placements Team at education-schoolexperience@brookes.ac.uk
If you need any of the information or documentation from this site in a different format, please contact the Partnerships & Placements Team at education-schoolexperience@brookes.ac.uk
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