So far, this award winning education and outreach programme has assembled students aged 9-14 years old from nearby state schools with over 460 professionals volunteering including artists, City company architects and staff.

The central purpose is to make creative and cultural experiences accessible to children, young people and their families in order to increase their knowledge of art, architecture and the built environment, and gain new creative and interpersonal skills. Many young people are from under-represented communities, unlikely to have visited this area of the City or consider art or the built environment as education and career pathways. 

Each year we work with 9 schools and each student engages in 10 learning hours of experimental and hands-on activities, first from a skyscraper where they considered the City as a composition to create collaborative collages of skyline views. At street level students investigated sculptures through a ‘Stroll and Sketch’ tour, using art and architecture themes and sketching activities to record their responses with techniques tailored to the artwork.

Pupils sketch design their own sculpture for a City space using a ‘polyptych’ sketchbook designed for the programme. Working in small teams the pupils create their 3D responses to the Sculptures and City using the Stixx system, a co-creation tool developed in collaboration with Scale Rule, designed as an accessible means to explore, design and build three dimensional forms.

Sculpture in the City is set amongst the historic and architectural landmarks of the City’s insurance district and each year features new artworks by internationally acclaimed and emerging artists.