““I think, at a child’s birth, if a parent could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”
”
For 2024 ‘Curiosity : A Children’s Conference’ returned to the wonderful Ironmongers’ Hall involving five schools from across the country.
The last Curiosity Conference took place on Thursday 21st March 2024. Five schools from around the country gathered to share their stories based on some artefacts from World War 2 and a bit of time travelling. Each school gave a great performance cheered on by their peers and all their creativity came to a wonderful fruition as the stuck time-traveller ‘Phil’ entered the hall at the end covered in dust and high-fiving all and sundry. The Creative Associates and teachers did a great job, Sam Gayton the visiting author was as exuberant as ever and Jon Ralphs illustrated the stories in real time effortlessly. The Ironmongers’ representatives also had a lovely time declaring it, “the highlight of the year.”
Overview: This year’s Curiosity Conference programme took place over one zoom visits and two visits in person. Before the first zoom session each school had their class put into groups. They created stories around the artefacts that were sent to them by Mrs Bench (London Museum of Artefacts) and Astrid (time-travelling Viking). And then our team of Creative Associates visited each school twice to rehearse each group’s curious tales which were acted out and written by the children. The schools then travelled to London to the Ironmongers’ Hall to perform their stories to a packed house.
Here is a carousel of photos from those visits from Astrid and Ms Bench…
The schools that participated this year were:
Bethany CE VA Junior School, Bournemouth, Dorset.
St Stephen’s C of E Primary School, Lambeth, London.
St Marys C of E Primary School, Brent, London.
St Andrews Benn C of E VA Primary School, Rugby, Warwickshire.
Emmaus Catholic and C of E Primary School, Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
We would like to thank all the teachers in all of the above schools and Cathy Walker, Hannah Roze-Lewis, Raewyn Lippert and Annekoos Arlman for all their hard work, good humour and belief in making Curiosity in the Classroom such a great event for the children. And of course our fantastic funders, The Ironmongers’ Company, Shaftesbury Place, Barbican, London EC2Y 8AA www.ironmongers.org/
Curiosity 2024 and previous events…
Keynote Inspiration
2024’s keynote inspiration for the conference was author, Sam Gayton. He made us curious enough in 2017 and 2022 with his keynotes and despite the late cancellation of 2020, even more curious to get him back again…
“But... it's one of those laws of the universe, isn't it? Nothing stays the same. Things change.”
― Sam Gayton
Sam was the visiting author at the Curiosity Conference back in 2017 and almost 2020. He made everyone so curious that we invited him back! He lives by the sea in Margate. His first book, The Snow Merchant was published in 2009.
He loves Italian food, drinking tea, being on the alert for Zombies, strumming his guitar and joining as many rock bands as possible. He has written 9 novels and is curious at just about everything.
Since his first book, Sam has had three more books published in the UK all with Andersen Press, Lilliput, Hercufleas and his most recent, His Royal Whiskers. Sam is currently working on this 5th book, The Last Zoo was published in March 2019. He also writes for the Oxford Reading Tree series.
If you would like to find out more about Sam you can do so via his website: www.samgayton.com
See Sam's welcome message to the Curiosity 2024 schools below...
Curiosity in the Classroom
Instead of the usual conference in 2019 we decided with the schools and the Ironmongers’ Company’s input on a project called ‘Curiosity in the Classroom’. All the work for this was carried out at each individual school’s premises giving the children an experience of the Curiosity idea in the familiar surroundings of their own schools. With this new concept Year 5 pupils received three visits from MakeBelieve Arts as they did before but on the third visit this time they presented their Curiosities to their own school, to an invited audience of parents/carers, governors, teachers, press and pupils. It was a huge success and equipped with the experience of Curiosity in the Classroom everyone is looking forward to the conference returning to the Ironmongers’ Hall in 2020.
