FORWARD ARTS FOUNDATION: NATIONAL POETRY DAY. Agency: Storycatchers Helping young imaginations spark and bloom.
Skills used: campaign strategy, audience insight, education communications, curriculum aligned content development, creative direction, art direction, social media campaign development.
Outcomes:
Our classroom ready resources removed barriers to teaching poetry.
83% increase in teaching resource downloads from the previous year.
Cross-curricular lesson ideas encouraged creative exploration with poetry.
Royal family social share boosted reach to 5.7 million people.
Context
National Poetry Day wanted to increase participation in schools, particularly in deprived areas, and support teachers to deliver poetry in the classroom.
Research shows that engaging in poetry can be beneficial for anyone’s wellbeing but that disadvantaged youth often engage strongly with poetry. It can be a helpful way to explore complex feelings, use it as an escape from challenging realities, develop resilience. For schools it offers a low cost way for young people to express themselves, think about emotions and build confidence.
Challenge
Many teachers lacked confidence teaching poetry. The existing resources on the website were little more than a list of curriculum objectives, which made it difficult to turn the idea of teaching poetry into a practical classroom activity.
Insight
Teachers are busy and stretched. Poetry is not a core curriculum subject, so despite its benefits it often gets pushed aside.
If poetry was going to be used more in classrooms, teachers needed something quick and practical they could pick up and run with. Our solution was to create ready to use resources that made poetry feel simple, accessible and flexible across subjects.
Approach
Using curriculum guidance provided by education specialists, we created a suite of classroom ready resources aligned to learning outcomes.
The worksheets were designed to work across subjects, encouraging teachers to explore poetry through art, music and drama as well as English lessons. This helped teachers introduce poetry with confidence and made the activity engaging for pupils from early years through to A level.
Alongside the resources we developed a social media campaign to promote National Poetry Day and drive teachers to download the free classroom materials.
Impact
83 percent increase in teaching resource downloads year on year
100 percent increase in visitors viewing resources and then downloading them
average webpage dwell time increased from two seconds to nearly two minutes
campaign visibility boosted when the Royal Family shared National Poetry Day on social media
Teachers across the UK shared how pupils were exploring poetry and finding their voices.