Falkirk Cultural Coordinators Glow Group

Overview
Gayle Martin is Cultural Coordinator for Falkirk Council with responsibility for nursery, primary and secondary schools to increase the arts and cultural activities for children aged 3-18 and setting up initiatives and programmes as well as fund raising. Gayle has created a Glow group to publish and celebrate the work which has taken place within Falkirk Council through the Cultural Coordinator team.
Context
The Falkirk Cultural Coordinators group contains a page explaining who Gayle is, her remit, work and contact details.  She then has a Creative Futures page which is a careers projects for S4 to S6 pupils who are interested in careers and courses within the Creative Industries sector.  This  page shows dates of courses available and further opportunities for young people to visit industries and further education establishments such as Edinburgh College of Art as well as CPD opportunities for teachers.  This page also leads to the Youth Music Initiative which is an National Initiative that Gayle manages for the Falkirk area and explains the wealth of opportunities for 3-18 year old learners for free music provision both in and after school.  She is currently working on a Moving Image project as is uploading the work the children have completed on this initiative.
The Glow Group also contains an Exhibitions page which display the work of pupils throughout the Council.  Every year there are annual exhibitions of the various years groups.  Initially Gayle used to hire private space for this and this would cost £1200 per week.  She realised that by using Glow she was providing an opportunity for free space to exhibit the pupils’ work without the cost and maintenance required by hire of a hall.
Finally she has the Creative Learning Network which lists communities that can work together to support Creative Learning and provides details for parents, education staff and pupils of CPD and support that is available to support Curriculum for Excellence.

Gayle has also created a Falkirk Council Orchestra and Bands site.  The children worked along side professional musicians for six weeks and produced a performance at the RSMD.  This was a great way for learners to realise there is a career in music and to work with people who are only a few years older than them and aapreciate what they have achieved.  Gayle has recorded this performance and uploaded the video into Glow.
The Glow page also gives a list of all the regional bands that are available for learners with contact details if they are interested in joining that music group as well as a list of all the instrumental instructors and the ability to contact them through Glow.
Gayle had previously used the authority web site and social networking sites to publish the work of the Cultural Coordinators team however she feels that using Glow has been a huge advantage as she can now contact all learners and practioners within Falkirk as they all have access to Glow

*Listen to Gayle give a tour of her Glow Group and the work she has been doing in her role as Cultural Coordinator

Ingredients
*Glow Username and Passsword
*Access to cretae Glow groups at Local Authority Level

Recipe
Follow these videos to find out how to recreate elements of Gayle’s Glow Group
*How to add, remove and change the title of pages

*How to add images using Image Web Part

*How to add image using Text Editor

*How to Hotspots images to pages within the Glow Group

*How to add a Glow Group to Favourites