We have over 30 companies supporting this programme providing placements and mentoring. We know from professional experience that credits on real productions and experience inside the industry are the magic ingredients that provide opportunity to new creative talent. Without support from our friends and partners, we would not be able to train such promising future creatives and serve the talent pipeline for the creative sector. So thank you to all our partners and supporters.

Through doing and making, students are grappling with provocative and meaningful concepts. They are exercising empathy in a more realised way because they are having to make creative decisions about how to tell this story and how to convey the complex emotions involved in risky behaviours - the thrill and excitement, the risk and bravery and then the betrayal and grief.

What a phenomenal achievement and genuine honour to be awarded Platinum ArtsMark! This puts us among a very small number of schools across the country leading in creative arts practice and cultural learning.

We have used our Artsmark intentions to galvanise collaborative commitment to increasing access to the creative industries for young people currently under represented in the creative sector and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.  In 2021 we partnered with ScreenSkills and the BFI to become a UK Centre for Screen Excellence, delivering traineeships to diverse young people providing placements directly in the creative industries. 

Curiosity is the space between boredom and a new idea. It is the energy that pushes that new idea along until it becomes a well researched and carefully considered creative action. Curiosity is the engine room of imagination and innovation.

At ESA, we include watching films, TV and theatre as reading. Similarly all forms of textual interpretation including listening to music, researching and analysing art are a form of 'reading' but all of it requires confident multimedia literacy. All of that cultural magic, wonder and reverie starts with reading and loving good stories and writing - in all their forms.

Here at ESA, we believe in ‘code switching’ - by this we mean our ability to move between different types of communication - the informal and the formal; the implicit and the explicit; the intended and the unintended - all communication is meaningful.

Reflecting on my story as a child in Lewisham and a young man in Camden, I am struck by how enriched I am by the diversity and dynamism of this incredible city. How such a mashup of styles and influences has inspired me and added to my insight and how the fruit of the Windrush pioneers and their children has made special and valued contributions to my identity as a Londoner.

It may be too simplistic to say it this way but we really like our students and we want them to know it. We love being with them and knowing them and this comes before our passion for our subject, before our office of hierarchical power. Of course teachers are ‘in charge’, but not because we are superior, rather because we bothered to plan and prepare.