Cubitt Education runs a series of regular projects with a broad range of local people. These projects are long-running, and responsive, and in each case have arisen from the needs and interests of participants. In most cases Cubitt Artists and members of The Intern's Network work collaboratively with local people to create sustainable activities which can become embedded within the cultural and social life of local communities.

EVERYBODY draw

Every Monday morning at Canonbury Primary School around 200 children, joined by staff and parents/carers and artist volunteers, all draw together.  We programme a wide range of different drawing techniques: from drawing with water; to making a huge collage; but the most common, and popular activity remains huge sheets of paper and lots of different coloured pens.

EVERYBODY draw has been running since 2006 when it was set up by Cubitt artist Emma Kay. It is our flagship primary school activity and is at the heart of Cubitt Education's participant-led approach, which is driven by an ambition to enable both children and adults to find spaces for creative freedom and to develop increased autonomy over their own learning.

EVERYBODY draw is regularly documented on our Flickr archive, and it recently gained its own blog. In 2009/10 the pupils are forming their own EVERYBODY Draw Council: which will help us to decide what activities to organise and act as a local advocate for creative freedom amongst young people.

EVERYBODY click

EVERYBODY click is a project that explores children's ways of seeing, through their own creativity. Each week at Canonbury Primary School a small group of pupils is given the space, time and equipment to discover and experiment with photography on their own terms. Throughout EVERYBODY click the pupils are in charge- they decide how they want to be represented and represent each other. It is an opportunity for them to express their view of the world with the same creative freedoms professional artists take forgranted.

The project has a 'whole school' ethos: through EVERYBODY click every pupil in the school will have taken a portrait, and had their portrait taken by a fellow pupil. The pictures are uploaded to our Flickr archive each week where the pupils and their parents can view them and framed copies are displayed inside the school on an ongoing basis.

In April 2009 Cubitt Gallery hosted an exhibition that brought together a selection of these images, the exhibition was curated by the young photographers themselves. Click here to see more about the event.

..FUNartclub

..FUNartclub is a weekly after school club at Canonbury Primary School funded by Awards for All. It is fully participant-led in structure and content: each term 12-14 pupils work alongside 3-4 artists from Cubitt and The Interns Network as collaborators and equals. The pupils are able to pursue individual projects without pressure to work with a particular theme or material. Instead the club operates like a mini shared studio: a hive of creative practice, collaboration, and independent thinking.

Stonecarving

Our new secondary schools projects have been made possible through funding from Deutsche Bank, in partnership with Arts & Business and the Arts Council. In January 2009 we began working with Elizabeth Garret Anderson Language College- a state school for girls that is only a few minutes walk from Cubitt.  On Tuesday mornings Cubitt and EGA are running a stonecarving project for Year 7 pupils. The workshops are led by the classes themselves, who are given creative freedom to decide what they want to do, from how they work with the material, to whether they use a range of available related forms: drawing, clay and photography.

The classes have been documented on an ongoing blog, the content of which is mostly provided by the pupils themselves. It showcases the diversity and energy of the unusual project, and reflects the focus on process, not outcomes, and the importance of learning through independent inquiry and experimentation.

Photoshop Club

Photoshop Club runs at Elizabeth Garret Anderson Language College after school on Fridays. It enables skills-sharing between arts practitioners and young people in an informal setting. Each week professionals from the creative industries visit the Club (held in a new IT suite) sometimes to give a presentation on their work, or mostly just to help out with the pupils' own projects.

So far we have had a games designer, an animator, a photographer, and several artists coming to EGA, and the project has proved to be popular and successful, with a full classroom for every session and lots of lively projects underway.

We are committed to life-long learning: it is an essential part of our community-focussed approach. We have developed a close working relationship with Claremont Project, a day activity centre for over-55's on White Lion Street in Angel, and are currently expanding our provision with the generous support of Cripplegate Foundation.

Recent projects and collaborations with local older people have included:

• A successful funding bid with The Angel Players, a newly formed theatre company run by older people. They received £500 from O2 Its Your Community in their first steps towards becoming a travelling theatre company.
• The Mona Lisa project, in which 20 Claremont members painted Mona Lisa Baker (another Claremont member) in the likeness of the original Mona Lisa. The finished paintings were varied: a stunning variety of portraits that is testament to the diversity and rich character of our local community.
• Events such as our Christmas Festival and Summer Festival, provide the setting in which local people of all ages can come together in a celebratory and welcoming atmosphere- bringing the community through Cubitt's doors.

Inside Art

Inside Art is a monthly drawing and painting session, in which local older people come into Cubitt's studios and work alongside Cubitt artists. It began in 2006 when Jane Simpson and Sarah Pickstone initiated an informal partnership with Claremont Project.

Each month 6-12 older people from the local community draw with artists and Cubitt Education volunteers. The sessions are a mixture of experimental techniques, life drawing, still life, and they are fuelled by tea and biscuits.

A slideshow of Inside Art led by artist Carali McCall.