PoetryQuest is a national arts project sponsored by The Foyle Foundation and Van Cleef & Arpels. This project will link Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Cyfarthfa Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery with 16 primary schools, 4 in each area and introduce 1,000 children to epic poetry.
Over the 2009-2010 academic year the pupils will visit their partner arts venue and work with professional poets, visual artists and educators both there and back in the classroom. They will explore exceptional artwork at the venue and create their own epic poetry and artwork in response.
Their teachers will also attend an inspiring poetry and visual arts training day at the start of the year. Finally, representatives from each of the schools will celebrate with a festival style finale at the end of the academic year bringing work together from all four areas involved.
PoetryQuest is an excellent idea – one that allows poetry to play a central role in the life of children, and encourages them to discover, explore and enjoy the manifold and various delights of language.
Sir Andrew Motion
The children will be given the chance to create their own ‘poetry tipis’. These will be artworks in themselves, doubling as magical performance spaces in which children will experience the pleasure of telling their own epic stories through poetry.