How two PTAs harnessed music and the arts to support their schools
Our charity single helped pay for the school's solar panels
Our children’s school, Barn Croft Primary, was facing funding cuts and a budget deficit – it didn’t have enough money for basic items such as art supplies, pens or paper. I hadn’t been involved with the PTA much before, but I felt really annoyed about the situation, so I went to a meeting with my partner, artist Hilary Powell, to see if we could help.
We’re filmmakers, and we run a Community Interest Company called Optimistic Foundation that has crowdfunded solar panels on 16 houses in our street. We suggested to the PTA that we could do the same for the school, which would save thousands in energy costs.
To raise the money we needed, we came up with the idea of recording a Christmas single with all the pupils, and trying to get it to number one. Hilary chose the song You’re the Voice by John Farnham, because the lyrics are all about empowerment and sticking up for something that’s important to you. A neighbour helped us make a music video showing the pupils singing and holding banners protesting against the funding cuts. It’s hard to resist giving to cute little children singing and saying they need money for their education.
Additionally, we made a short documentary explaining why we felt it was important for people to donate to our cause, ran Facebook ads and set up a Crowdfunder. Some members of the PTA were quite well connected in the media, and they helped get the song onto radio and TV, including BBC London, ITV, Channel 4 News and Al Jazeera.
Soon people were donating from all around the UK, not just the local area. We watched in awe as the single reached number 19 in the iTunes charts. Within a month we had hit our Crowdfunder target of £50,000! We linked up with Solar for Schools, a social impact business that develops solar projects in schools, and they provided additional funding and took care of the solar panel installation process.
Frustratingly, it then took about a year to get the panels installed, because the council owns the school building and was initially reluctant to allow it. In the meantime, we installed solar panels at three other schools in the borough and initiated conversations with yet more.
The panels at Barn Croft are finally in, and this month we’re going into the school for a special celebration. The children are going to sing the song again in assembly, and we’re going to play a video that will remind them how they took action and made this happen. It’s all down to them.
- Dan Edelstyn, former member of Friends of Barn Croft, Walthamstow, London (213 pupils)
Our first Creative Arts Festival was a fundraising success and went down a storm with the community
With a steel band playing outside the key stage 1 building, a street dance workshop in the hall and a community art project under way in one of the classrooms, our school was transformed into a hive of artistic activity.
In addition to performances and workshops, pupils were busy finding out about careers in the arts: they asked children’s author Helen Docherty questions, learned about drawing characters from artist Nick Thain and asked Paw Patrol’s Anya Cooke about life as a child actor.
Our first ever Creative Arts Festival was proving to be a big hit. More than 100 families attended the one-day event, not just from our school but from the local area, too.
After seeing how popular the school’s science and engineering fair was, I had wondered if we could do something similar that focused on the arts and suggested the festival. I am an amateur performer, and the arts have always been a passion of mine. I knew the school was also keen to do more in that area.
I work in events, so I offered to head up a sub-committee of the PTFA to organise the festival. We knew that to attract the wider community, we’d need to run a high-quality event that didn’t feel too much like a school fair, so we needed outside funding.
We didn’t have any luck with the Tesco Community Fund. However, we secured two other grants from South Gloucestershire Council and Thornbury Round Table, a local men’s group that gives to charitable causes.
One of the other PTFA parents works in the charity sector, so she knew how to word the grant applications, explaining how the festival would boost the children’s creativity and confidence and raise awareness of the arts. We needed to demonstrate the value the event would bring to the community, and since one of the town’s performance spaces had recently shut down, we argued that the festival could help plug the gap.
We also had to show that the event would be inclusive, so we offered SEN sessions and a ‘quiet zone’ for those who needed it, advertising this on our posters. The festival was completely wheelchair accessible since everything was on the ground floor.
We proved our environmental credentials by using paperless ticketing, recyclable cardboard cups in the café, and pre-loved items where possible, such as our Lego creation station. We also gave Plastic Free Thornbury a stand so they could raise awareness about their work.
The grants covered the £1,500 budget we needed, so all the proceeds from ticket sales and the café went straight to the PTFA. It turned out to be a good fundraiser and we made more than £1,900. Afterwards, a lot of parents told me it was the best event they’d ever been to locally, which was a very proud moment.
- Olivia Riddiford, St Mary’s C of E (VA) Primary School PTFA, Thornbury, South Gloucestershire (205 pupils)
Further reading
- How to work better with your PTA
- The rewards of nurturing your PTA
- Our PTA and school funded a library