Art Builders is our arts-in-education programme for primary and special schools. We love to inspire schools to programme art activity, giving young children and teaching staff an opportunity to get involved in the arts and be creative. We support teaching staff, pupils and artists to create and build together. Whether daily art lessons, whole school art weeks or big art days, we believe that creativity should be a valued part of the education system. Art Builders champions art experiences for every child, every academic year.
Get Involved In...
We are inviting primary and SEND schools to get creative this summer term by getting involved in Art Builders 2026!
Our artist team at Animate Arts are so passionate about bringing creative opportunities into classrooms that we are inviting schools from across the UK to join us in an action-campaign to collectively make more art happen in multiple classrooms, school halls, playgrounds this summer. You can programme activity as small or as big as you like, whether it is a whole school art project or a special art lesson for one class. Your activity may be of your own design or you could tap into the official Art Builders resources and events. Whatever you programme, we invite schools to bring creativity into the heart of your school across the same term, pledging the importance of our art subjects in the national curriculum, and demonstrating how creativity plays a vital part in everybody’s learning and wellbeing.
Our professional artist team will be providing a bundle of ideas and resources to support teachers in their school’s planning, including our inspirational CPD for teachers (yes, the ever-popular ‘Bootcamps workshops’ are back!) and projects for kids, art competitions and more! These range from paid resources to completely FREE activities to use in your classroom, so you can choose to run with our artist-made events and resources, or you can do your own... we simply would love to see creative things happening in your classrooms!
Like every year, we have a wonderful theme to help us explore our creativity. This year, our theme is:
Maths Masterpieces
We want to explore how numbers, measuring, shapes, symmetry, angles, ratios, and all sorts of numerical influences can create awesome masterpieces. There are so many artists, designers and crafts people who use numbers to create art works, either in practical ways such as scaling designs into full-size sculptures or measuring the recipe of paint mixtures, and those creatives who find inspiration in numbers such as the wonderful geometric tiles in ancient Islamic art or photographers using the golden ratio to make the perfect composition. Animate artists are always using maths in their creations, especially when creating their life-size installations from cardboard boxes and paper. Equally in schools, we know that maths is part of daily learning, so how can we explore this core subject in a creative way? How can we engage the visual learners, sensory learners and kinaesthetic learners when exploring numeracy? As one very famous physicist (and creative thinker) Albert Einstein once said:
“Creativity is intelligence having fun”
So, let’s Have some fun and create some masterpieces. If we can all play our part in this year’s Art Builders campaign, we can multiply the creative opportunities and learning for 100s of children and teachers across the country - together - because creativity counts.
Art Builders Day is Friday 26 June 2026
We will be celebrating the campaign with online events and activities, so we invite you to bookmark this date and consider programming something brilliantly creative for your school.
We will be providing lots of different projects, resources and events for your school to tap into between now and the Summer term. From teacher CPD workshops to classroom projects to downloadable resources, there is something for everyone!
ART BUILDERS PROGRAMME
HOW TO GET INVOLVED:
If you want to get involved in this year's programme and be the first to hear the latest updates and offerings, then simply:
- Subscribe to Animate Arts mailing list (scroll to the 'join' button at the end of this page)
- Email us via the green button below to register your interest (tell us who you are, your school and what you hope to plan).
A little more about the campaign...
The programme was born in 2019, with funding from Arts Council England, when we started our mission with eight partner schools, their pupils and a team of brilliant artists from east Kent. The project inspired so many individuals that the programme has attracted more schools to get involved. Since it began, Art Builders has supported 100s of schools, with over 160,000 young people getting involved in creative activities in their classrooms.
Currently, this programme is not subsidised with funding, but Animate Arts passionately believes in the value of creativity in our education system. In 2024, after 5 years of extraordinary activity and hard work, we paused the programme to reflect and look at funding options and direction. In 2026, we will offer a smaller programme with the most important elements so that we can continue to connect schools & artists, and bring ideas and support to teachers.
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