Open Eye Gallery is delighted to have been announced as a host venue for the 2021 MaxLiteracy Awards. Funded by the Max Reinhardt Charitable Trust, MaxLiteracy offers funding for museums and galleries in England to support a dedicated programme of creative writing and literacy work within learning settings through the visual arts. The Awards are run in partnership with Engage, the National Association for Gallery Education and the National Association for Writers in Education (NAWE). This year we were a recipient alongside Newark & Sherwood District Council and The Turnpike.

The £8,000 awarded will allow us to employ a creative writer to work with a local school on a creative writing or literacy project, taking inspiration from the venue’s collections, displays or building. The activities will lead to the development of a new resource for each venue, designed to encourage engagement with the venue through creative writing. These will be widely shared within the arts and education sectors to encourage the greater use of galleries, art museums and visual arts venues by schools for creative writing and literacy work.

In response to the global health emergency the 2021 call out for venues had an adapted focus. The awards invited galleries, museums, and visual arts venues to propose activity that aims to support the mental health and wellbeing of children, young people or young adults through creative writing, literacy and the visual arts. 

We will be partnering with with poet Pauline Rowe and Wirral Hospitals’ School, Birkenhead. Wirral Hospitals’ School is an alternative therapeutic school, in Birkenhead. Students have been medically and/or CAMHS assessed and are unable to access mainstream education. Over 50% of the students are pupil premium and suffer from mental health issues, gender dysphoria, many are diagnosed with ASC and ADHD, and others are also co-morbid with multiple medical conditions. The students are at an increased risk of isolation, limited social mobility and limited employment, which in turn increases the risk of ongoing mental health issues. The last 2 years of working with Wirral Hospitals’ School has shifted our thinking about inclusive learning, but also revealed to the school that photography has helped some of the hardest to reach students engage in school activity.

We applied for a MaxLiteracy award to build on our existing partnership with Wirral Hospitals’ School and expand our creative offer to students. With the expertise of Pauline Rowe, our funded creative writer, we will build upon previous visual approaches to learning and inform new fusions of photography/creative writing methodologies that can engage the hardest to reach. The activity that we aim to provide through this funding includes; 

• An exhibition at Wirral Hospitals’ School using OEG archive of photographs that connect to the theme of Mental Health and Wellbeing
• Photography activities such as photo-walks, gallery visits delivered by OEG.  
• Using images as a stimulus to explore creative writing methods writing from objects, ekphrasis, letter-writing, diary entries, scrap-booking, micro-fiction
• Finally, they will develop a digital resource around photography, mental health and literacy that will include the following elements relevant to the KS3 curriculum: managing emotions, healthy relationships, reading for pleasure, speaking and listening, expressive writing, creative writing and poetry.

“We are thrilled to announce the awardees for the MaxLiteracy Awards 2021. All three of the projects chosen include a strong commitment to using creative writing and visual arts to support the mental health of children and young people who have faced unprecedented pressures over the past year. At the same time as losing access to school, friends, family, support networks, children and young people have also missed out on cultural opportunities that are so crucial to their development. We are so looking forward to working with the expert writers, curators and teachers involved in all three projects, and delighted to play a part in supporting young people to thrive through access to creative writing and visual arts.”

Seraphima Kennedy – Director, National Association of Writers in Education 

“With a particular focus on mental health and wellbeing, the 2021 Awards are aimed at both formal and informal learning settings to further enhance and better the life chances and creative opportunities for young people. This is an exciting round through which we hope will develop and strengthen creative partnerships between arts and cultural organisations, learning settings and creative writers, particularly at a time when developmental support for young people is most crucial.”

Ronda Gowland-Pryde – MaxLiteracy Coordinator

“We have tried to make the MaxLiteracy Awards as flexible as possible in 2021 to address the many challenges brought by the pandemic and the huge need to support the mental health of our children and young people.  We know that the visual arts have a crucial role to play in recovery. We want to encourage museums and galleries to develop partnerships with teachers and creative writers that can work within the confines of changing public health guidelines but still reach vulnerable young people at a time of pressing need.”

 Veronica Reinhardt – Trustee of the Max Reinhardt Charitable Trust

“Engage is delighted to be working again with the Max Reinhardt Charitable Trust and the National Association for Writers in Education on MaxLiteracy. We want to support creative writers, children and young people to take inspiration from the visual arts. We are keen to explore how writing and engagement with art can support wellbeing. During this period of change, as a result of Coivd-19, we are keen to support children and young people to engage with creative writing and art.”

Jane Sillis – Director of Engage

Find out more about the 2021 MaxLiteracy Awards host venues here