There is growing evidence and appreciation that craft and making contribute to priorities within Scotland’s national education policy, providing a unique bridge between Expressive Arts and Technologies curriculums – unlocking learning and promoting creativity and attainment within science and numeracy disciplines. MAKE with the Knit Shop is a unique two-year teacher development project designed to embed craft approaches in schools, working with teachers and pupils from six primary schools across Dundee. The pilot programme focuses on supporting numeracy skills development in the classroom through a series of activities developed in partnership with local micro-factory Knit Shop, and professional textile makers.
Rosebank Primary School, one of the schools taking part in the programme, already takes an innovative approach to ‘hands-on’ learning, embedding craft directly into their vision for the school. The Rosebank Curriculum has a particular emphasis on global citizenship, learning for sustainability, outdoor learning and STEM, as well as embracing the opportunities for learning that being a Dundee City centre school gives. We take a closer look at the school’s craft activity and talk to Head Teacher Jennifer Heffell about crafts’ potential in school-wide thinking, Rosebank’s unique ‘Makerspace’, and how craft-based learning can reach far beyond Expressive Arts and Technologies outcomes.
Can you introduce yourself and Rosebank?
I’m Jennifer Heffell and I’m the head teacher at Rosebank Primary School. Rosebank is one of the city schools within Dundee and we’re probably closest to the main city centre. We have 300 pupils now and we’ve grown hugely in the last seven years, since we moved into our new building[i]. We are in an area of multiple deprivation, with around 64% of our children living within SIMD (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation) 1 and 2, which is said to be poverty. We have an unusual demographic – we have a lot of bilingual children from families that are arriving either as refugees or asylum seekers, placed in short-term lets in the area – so the school is multicultural, and we have lots of languages. I think, at the last count, we recorded 21 dialects with Urdu as our most prevalent language. This creates a nice mix of children with different life experiences, and we try to draw on these experiences to support the curriculum. In addition, many of our approaches to support additional needs (ASN) can also support bilingual children who are new to English as well.
There are 10 full classrooms (each with 33 pupils), and we have one specialised support base for children with complex needs. I think out of all the campus schools (Rosebank shares a building with Our Lady’s Roman Catholic Primary School), we are the newest and the most open-plan in the sense that you can see across to the other school.
Can you tell us how you think craft can be transformational in the school setting?
Craft is something that I really believe in, because it was part of my upbringing. Within Rosebank, it allows children to work together, and, through hands-on experience, they build confidence and make social connections. It also fosters inclusivity and communication skills, which is great as we have a lot of children who are non-verbal or bilingual. We find that craft encourages our bilingual children, and our children with additional support needs, to use speech with increased creativity and confidence. This has been evidenced through year one of the MAKE with the Knit Shop (MWTKS) project and the participation of one of our children with additional support needs. She really flourished in her communication during the pupil-facing sessions.
Within our classrooms, we also see how craft activities can impact emotional wellbeing. Many of our children are coming into school from trauma and deprivation backgrounds. Craft gives affected children pride and some much-needed time out. It’s a way to switch off but, crucially, it also builds self-esteem and helps children to process their emotions. These are all really good outcomes for us at Rosebank, and obviously, developing creativity and skills is something we’re trying to do in all aspects of STEM. All of this, on top of sharpening problem-solving skills, building resilience and developing fine motor skills is why craft is a key part of our strategy and planning. Teaching through craft feels truly transformational for us.
Maker Kim Norrie with Rosebank teacher Jess McIntosh
What is your vision for embedding craft across Rosebank?
We want craft to be seen as a vibrant element of our offer at school, to be a part of the curriculum and to be considered at every aspect of planning – accentuating and complimenting all aspects of the school experience.
We have a ‘wider achievement passport’ in the school and we include craft skills in this. So, for example, the primary fives must have experience of knitting, another year group will learn how to sew on a button. We understand that these are essential life skills, and that their benefits can cross a lot of our learning experiences and outcomes. Embedding craft in this way also allows experienced pupils to share their skills with less experienced and younger children. We begin skills development with card or plastic needle threading sets in primary one. Giving our pupils such practical opportunities also helps us to celebrate diversity through a number of our craft-based projects. For example, one of our pupil’s mums is coming into school during our expressive arts week this term to do Arabic painting and paper craft. This encourages our children to talk about their families and backgrounds, which is so important.
We are connecting craft across the curriculum through our work with the Meta-skills Progression Framework[ii]. Meta-skills are innate, timeless, higher-order skills that create adaptive learners and promote success in whatever context the future brings. We use the framework as a tool to spotlight key skills and we are currently focusing on ‘curiosity’ and ‘creativity’. They are skills we are embedding continuously, but using the framework, we are naming them too. This enables us to be more strategic in how we think about building curiosity and creativity, often through craft activities, into our teaching outcomes.
To the side of this work, we seek out ways that we can be responsive by bringing in craft skills. For example, we have a big dolls house situated at the edge of our school ‘Makerspace’. We undertook a ‘country study’ last year and designed each room within the house to focus on a different world country, so there’s a Japanese room and a Scottish room, amongst others, and the children have been using the rooms for stop-motion projects. This work has made me think about links to craft, puppetry and storytelling. We are also looking into the links between craft and coding and 3D-printing, because we have an in-house 3D printer, and we are continuing our exploration into traditional crafts from around the world, linking to geography, history and social studies. We will also continue to draw on crafts’ benefits in supporting mental health and wellbeing. Simply keeping craft integrated into school improvement planning, I think, is really important.
Can you tell us more about Rosebank’s Makerspace?
Our upper school Makerspace has really evolved over time. It began with Sarah Jenkins, who is our STEM lead. She first piloted flexible seating in the classrooms at Rosebank. We decided that we wanted to go further and began by creating a physical zone in our corridor area, specifically for creative activity, which included craft and art supplies, and a workbench.
Over time our resources have increased and now we have three sewing machines (which are tightly managed by me and Mrs Mullay, the Deputy Head). Our aim is for the Makerspace to be as inclusive as possible. Activities are bilingual and include visual guides for a range of learners. At the crux of the space is an ambition to build an inspirational area that the kids want to work in.
Primary Six are the key custodians of the Makerspace, but we also open it up to other years on particular days. We want to make sure as many children are getting access to it whenever it’s possible. In general, the children understand how to use it and don’t mess about. They respect the space and the privileges they are given within it.
How do you make sure that your staff are confident to teach craft skills?
We rely on each other’s skills, and cascade learning across the school. We also have ‘friends of Rosebank’ – people local to the community who do voluntary work at the school – and they come in and teach knitting skills for example. Career-long Professional Learning (CLPL), such as the MWTKS project is crucial and there needs to be more CLPL opportunities like it. We are also always trying to see where we can get parents to link in, or local businesses and the local community, to share craft skills that are new to us as a teaching team.
Jennifer Heffell and Jess McIntosh with maker Kim Norrie during the MWTKS CLPL Programme
Can you share an example of craft’s benefits to your pupils?
We have observed how the Makerspace benefits our ASN children. An example, from our Primary Four group, focuses on a child who wasn’t coping well with regulation. He was able to sit and work on his craft project with a group of children around him – and he was helping them with their projects too. It evidences to us that, because he was able to access the project his own way and do so independently, craft increased his general confidence and his social skills. We have also seen, through the MWTKS project, that the collaborative element of craft projects, when linking to enterprise, builds ownership and autonomy as well as friendships and different kinds of understanding around how to work together.
Why did Rosebank decide to become part of the Make with The Knit Shop programme?
We took part in the ‘Trashion Show’ project with the V&A Dundee in 2023, developing a fashion show, with our Primary Six and Seven year groups, working with upcycled materials. We connected the fashion collection to our curriculum rationale. So, one of the outfits was ‘STEM’, one of the outfits was ‘diversity’. The children just loved that project, and we felt, from that, that it was important to continue bringing external craft knowledge, expertise and projects into our classrooms.
Learning craft skills through the MWTKS CLPL has allowed our teachers to connect with professional makers and bring them into their classrooms, hone their skills, be inspired, build resilience, take creative risks and be less afraid of getting it ‘wrong’ – because with craft you can start again or take your project in a new direction. Craft has the capacity to really open up the idea that everyone can be creative and I have found that this is really important for building confidence within the staff team. Through the MWTKS CLPL our teachers have been able to believe: ‘Not only can I do this, but I can teach it with a class of quite challenging children’. This kind of self-belief is crucial for the teaching team – for their own development and to share with other teachers – as well as their pupils.
Maker Kim Norrie at Rosebank
Learn more about the aims of the project here
[i] Rosebank moved the new Coldside shared campus in August 2018 and share the site with Francis Wright Nursery, Our Lady’s R.C. Primary School and The Hilltown Community Centre.
[ii] The Skills Development Scotland meta-skills progression framework has been developed in collaboration with partners and practitioners from across Scotland and aims to help with identifying and understanding what meta-skills look like in the classroom. The framework builds on the ‘Skills 4.0 – A Skills Model to Drive Scotland’s Future’ paper and illustrates examples of meta-skills across Curriculum for Excellence levels, from early years through to senior phase.