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Our schools outreach programme ‘Faces and Places’ uses our Collection to explore the connections between people and place. We’ve been inviting schools across London to discover the people represented in our Collection, learn more about their local history, and to create their own art in response to the portraits.

Faces and Places is now well underway, having launched in the London borough of Brent last term. Participating primary, secondary and special schools have received CPD training for teachers, artist-led workshops and a resource box containing portraits of ten inspiring people connected with their local area.

Francesca Laws, Schools Programmes Manager caught up with Nawal Filali, Deputy Head teacher at College Green Nursery School in Brent, to see how the programme went in their school.

How have you found working with the Faces and Places contents and resources?

Amazing, we have adapted the activities for the younger age group of our learners. We have created exhibition boards with one of the portraits as the starting point, and then mounted the children’s responses alongside. For example we have used Lenny Henry’s portrait to explore the curriculum topic of emotional mapping and looked at how happiness is shown, for example through laughter, giggles, smiles. The children demonstrated how they show their happiness, and we took pictures of them.

We’ve created two more display boards: ‘Proud to be me’ which focuses on the workshop portraits we made with artist Marysa Dowling around pose and expression, and another board showing the work the children made in response to Zadie Smith’s portrait. With Zadie Smith’s portrait, the children (under age 3) explored facial features (eyes, nose, mouth etc) using viewfinders to focus in on individual features. They looked close up at the portrait and then in response created their own portraits of Zadie Smith using found objects such as buttons, string and cardboard. This work links to the Early Years framework for children to investigate features, and shows how portraits, and links to portraiture, can be useful in early development for children. We used the portraits to explore facial expressions and to ‘read’ portraits.

The portraits reflect Brent and the Faces and Places resource box is very well presented. We found out about the ‘Faces and Places’ project through Brent Museum and Archives, and took part in the voting process for the Brent portraits to be included. The people included - such as George Michael and Jayaben Desai - can be seen in the borough as large-scale murals too. Schools are looking to diversify their curriculum and teachers are also signposting parents to relevant content.

The big message is that the early years learners can access these resources and learn through portraiture. The children can ask questions, pose and respond. When our exhibition is ready we’ll invite the National Portrait Gallery learning team to come and visit.

Thanks to Nawal and all the children and staff at College Green Nursery School!

As part of the project, a selection of the children’s work from College Green Nursery School and other participating schools was displayed as part of the Icons of Colour: Portraits of Brent’s Change Makers exhibition at Brent Museum and Archives. This exhibition, which ran from December 2021 – February 2022, celebrated inspiring people of colour connected to the London borough of Brent.

This term, we’re excited to be taking our Faces and Places project to the London boroughs of Haringey and Lambeth, with students investigating portraits of ten key figures connected to the boroughs. If your school would like to be involved, you can develop your own portraiture projects using the online Faces and Places resources and suggested activities. The portraits and activities can be used to explore local history and connections, portraits and portrait making, and the diversity of British history.

Discover more about our Faces and Places schools programme on our website.