Learning, Impact & Next Steps: Artspiration Pilots

Post written by: Erin Walcon

Across spring and summer 2026, TASN (Torbay Arts in Schools Network) hosted two experimental pilot programmes which aimed to find (and test) inventive creative solutions to specific regional barriers and obstacles. The goal? To find the key hacks which can have an immediate impact on how children and young people access aspirational arts, culture and heritage opportunities in Torbay, both inside and outside of formal education settings.

The aim here was to try new inventive solutions to improve equitable access, to empower entitlement and to ensure that ALL children have a way to access arts, creativity and heritage and to dream big dreams.

This pilot work was made possible via small scale systems-change funding from the regional Local Motion initiative. This created the conditions for both pilots to take place, as well as a parallel experimental new approach to decision-making from within the partnership of TASN. You can read more about this process and the decision-making framework which enabled this work in a previous blogpost here. This felt like the start of new approach to governance, consortium working & a new way forward for the TASN partners.

Now that the full impact reporting from both pilots is completed, we are delighted to be able to share the impact and reach figures of the pilots, as well as the learning and recommended action steps.

The headline is: within a relatively small budget and over a 6-month delivery period we managed to create and support a significant swathe of activity and reach a wide and diverse array of young people in Torbay.

In total, the two Artspiration initiatives (the Travel Pass & Micro-Commissions) enabled 34 different sessions/events which reached 10 Torbay schools and 9 arts/culture/heritage/venue partners. In total 5 Micro-Commissions were commissioned and 7 Artspiration Travel passes were given to school partners. This reached across primary education, secondary education and alternative education with SEND specialist schools included.

The total reach of the above activity across 6 months was 1,612 children, young people, artists and teachers from across Torbay, ranging in age from EYFS (ages 3-4 years) up to GCSE level (Year 11).

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Quotes:

Child: ‘I’ve never had a chance to do something like this before. I didn’t know making art things could be an actual job.’

Teacher: ‘The session was buzzing with curiosity and inspiration. The children were enthralled with the exhibition and then inspired by the artist. Most of our children had never visited a gallery or met a real artist before. The gallery lead and his staff went out of their way to ensure the children had an unforgettable session. It was humbling how the children talked about having never been to a gallery before and that they wanted to bring their families to return for their own visit.’

Teacher: ‘It was incredible to see the children so engaged throughout the workshop and looking around the art gallery. Considering they haven’t been to anything like this before, their engagement and curiosity was fantastic. More of this, please!’

Headteacher: ‘Without this funding, this opportunity simply would not have been available to children at my school. It is essential that this continues in order for the most under-served children to be able to access the same creative opportunities as their better off peers.’

Teacher: ‘Our highlight was the amount of artists available for students to see – they enjoyed talking to the artists about their work face-to-face. They liked seeing that they were ‘everyday’ people which made the prospect of being an artist feel more realistic and attainable for them.’

Teacher: ‘I hadn’t visited the craft festival before either and I had no idea that it would be so large – it exceeded even my expectations. An amazing day out.’

Year 9 student: “This is so much better than searching for artists on google”

Head of Creative Arts: ‘This is so valuable to the students in terms of the variety of makers, cultural exposure and a sense of community. I think we should try to do this trip every year.’

Head of Art: ‘My whole class now have brand new artists they have chosen first hand to use as inspiration in their GCSE projects, many of these students have never visited galleries or festivals before.’

Teacher: ‘The school will not approve this trip if we have to pay for the transport costs so please continue this funding as it has been so valuable and worthwhile this year. Thank you!’

Young Person in Year 3: ‘I’ve never been to a museum before but want to come back. It was great making my figure and taking it home. I learnt a lot about toys.’

Young Person in Year 5: ‘I have never been to Torre Abbey before, it is huge! I like the museum and all of the artefacts like the swords and guns!’

Staff member: ‘It was lovely to see so many children engaged in their learning and joining in. They have been asking to do more art and it has shown me what they are capable of.’

Staff member: ‘This provided a fantastic opportunity for our pupils to experience 4 different events that we otherwise would not have been able to provide. The pupil engagement was excellent as was behaviour which is a good indicator of their level of engagement and enjoyment. The outcomes have shown the significant benefit for our pupils, many of which will not be able to experience these things without us providing the opportunity for them.’

Teacher: ‘Thank you for the funding, the opportunities we have been able to provide for our pupils has been fantastic and helped to build the joy of art and creativity amongst the pupils that we can continue to drive through our in school provision. We will look to offer opportunities similar to these going forward but are restricted significantly by our school’s high pupil premium levels.’

Nursery Lead: ‘It was incredible to see how the children’s engagement and curiosity grew week-on-week as they became increasingly confident and comfortable with the visiting artist and the different instruments.’

Teacher: ‘Thank you for enabling such a wonderful opportunity and facilitating a partnership with a local music organisation which hopefully can continue into the future. It was a success from start to finish! It would be wonderful to build on this connection with children in Nurture provision in the main school.’

Teacher: ‘I was surprised by the level of sustained engagement in music making with children who are only 3 and 4 yrs old.’

Teacher: ‘Our children had an amazing experience that would have been out of the reach of most of our families. Truly unforgettable for all!’

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Next Steps

Now that the impact reporting is complete. the work is moving into ‘next steps’ stages. The outcomes and learning are as follows:

Decision Making Panel

1. The Decision-Making Panel was a successful experiment. Five members of the TASN network came together to make decisions on the recipients. This group were self-selecting, based on their ability to be objective (i.e. no vested interest in receiving funds) and all had experience of both education and arts sector challenges.

Micro-Commissions

2. We received significantly more applications for the Micro-Commission than we were able to commission and enable. This demand evidences that outreach within school settings is clearly a high level of need, and that this Micro-Commission model is more accessible for Torbay schools, given geographic barriers to access and school capacity constraints. If work is to roll out at a larger scale, additional commission funds will be needed to support work IN school settings, which is providing enrichment and aspiration-raising career pathways support. This outreach work is beyond and outside the National Curriculum, and therefore will need to be supported externally. This is part of essential Skills, Training and Employment pathways which can improve regional social mobility, NEET prevention and routes into employment.

Artspiration Travel Pass

3. The Artspiration Travel Pass requests from schools highlighted several areas of learning. Firstly, schools are currently unable to take any creative arts field trips off site due to budget constraints. Secondly, that there are some regional logistical barriers which prevent the schools from being able to access the regionally-based arts, culture and heritage venues ‘on their doorstep’. Some of this is to do with the nature of the education and outreach offer available, some of it to do with the timing of work being programmed/platformed, and some of it is to do with perceptual barriers about quality of offer.

All three of these barriers need addressing in order to improve access, regional infrastructure and strengthen partnership working to enable step-change in the region. This will require a carefully targeted programme of work which can both enable field trips financially via simple mechanisms, but also in parallel, a strand of targeted work to help support, bolster and improve the quality of the education/outreach offer at regional venues and to better communicate and share that offer to schools in simple and clear format with information collated and synthesised, with enough lead-in time for schools to plan activity linking to it. See specific recommendations below.

Recommendations for Action Steps:

TASN to seek funding for a scaled-up and more extensive programme to build on the learnings of the pilot, expanding these and addressing the identified areas of need whilst scaling up the work and ensuring a longer-term delivery period to enable more Torbay schools to engage. This needs to include increased budgets for Micro-Commissions and continuation of the Artspiration Travel Pass. A scaled programme also will consider how other pilot initiatives could serve as a template for a shared and cohesive information source, such as the TASN Shared Menu, which was first piloted in 2025. See an example here: Torbay Arts in Schools Network: 2026-27 Shared Menu.
TASN continues to evolve and grow the now tested Decision-Making Panel model, exploring models which can formalise this kind of democratic equitable decision-making whilst also ensuring objectivity and transparency, separate from vested interests or any conflict of interest. This will form part of the governance structures and accountability mechanisms of the partnership going forward.
Regional heritage venues are able to access financial support via heritage-specific schemes (Heritage Places) to improve their connectivity and shared coherent offers, as well as improving the clarity of information about their education/outreach available to schools, creating timely advance shared collaborative menus and providing advance information to school partners with an awareness of the key curriculum links for schools. This work is currently beginning via a teacher’s focus group which is taking place in October 2026.
Regional theatres and live performance venues consider the area schools’ needs in terms of timing of programming live work and/or events, particularly with regard to touring work which has links to curriculum at both primary and secondary levels. (I.e. not platforming work in the holidays or at the weekend, but ensuring it can take place on a school day with travel included within the school day, and that teachers are given enough lead-in time to plan trips, including the requisite risk assessment and fundraising necessary.)
An improvement of education and outreach offers at regional venues which want to welcome school trips – i.e. a programme of exchange, CPD and training which can enhance and deepen the quality of the offer.

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The TASN partnership will be taking these next steps and shaping this next area of work across Sept-Dec 2026.