About the Project

SENsory Atelier funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation explores new ways to learn, discover and develop together. Attenborough Arts Centre are working with 9 SEN schools in Leicester and Leicestershire.

We will be drawing on the principles of  Reggio Emilia to explore ways to cultivate imagination and the children’s sense of the possible. It’s a collaborative journey, where children and adults are working alongside each other with a child-led approach and a co-construction model of delivery and development. Together we want to create our own teaching and learning pedagogy that is relevant to us all.

“Experiences of curious investigation, belly laughter, triumphant achievement, heartfelt tears, satisfying discovery and full bodied engagement with the smells, textures and messes of the world”

Ann Pelo, The Language of Art. 2007

SENsory Atelier gives space for children to lead their learning journeys, express themselves and access the world. It supports teachers without specialist arts subject / cultural education expertise, to enable children to lead the direction of enquiry, and reframe our understanding of how they learn. This collaborative approach shifts the schools’ reliance on external peripatetic staff, to giving teachers confidence and capacity to devise creative programmes informed by children themselves