Geographical Association

During 2005, primary schools in Castleford and Airedale were invited to take part in a local geography project part funded by the GA/DfES and Wakefield District Council.

The project was supported by Wendy North, Wakefield Local Authority Teacher Adviser for Humanities and involved ten primary and one special school. Four of those schools have contributed ideas and resources to this website.

The GA's objective for the Local Project was to work in a way that was geographically innovative for the teachers concerned in order to provide ideas and resources which could be shared with teachers nationally.

Parts of the Wakefield district are currently undergoing a transformation in a regional development programme led by Yorkshire Forward with the stated objective: 'to transform towns and cities, with the direct involvement of local people.' (p.5 Our Town Your City – Urban Renaissance – 5 Towns)

This initiative provided an excellent opportunity for involving local schools and during the Autumn and Spring terms of 2005 a curriculum development project called 'Changing Places' was set up focused on the regeneration of Castleford, Airedale and Fryston. The project was closely linked to The Big Town Plan, a documentary about the regeneration of a town being filmed by Talkback TV on behalf of Channel 4 television.

The participating schools were provided with a resource pack containing paper based and electronic resources on CD-Rom. These included architects' drawings and plans, ideas to develop teaching and learning, aerial photographs and digital maps. They were also provided with a 1-5 user version of the simple GIS programme 'Local Studies' to enable them to make use of local digital maps.

The documents below explain the project, planning structures, ideas and resources to get you started:

• Wheldon Infant School - Foundation Stage Children use the ICT program 'Local Studies' to describe their local area (external website).


• Wheldon Infant School - Foundation Stage: Pictorial Representations of the Local Area (external website).


• Glass Houghton Infant School - (Castleford is to have a new pedestrian bridge over the river - Science Week 2005) Building Bridges (external website).


• Half Acres J & I – Regeneration: Planning for Geography and Design Technology (PDF).


• Oyster Park Junior – The Green: Geography & Creative Writing (PDF).


• Oyster Park Junior – The Green: Children's Writing (PowerPoint Presentation).

In the Summer term of 2005 geography co-ordinator Marie Stevens and LEA Advisory Teacher for Humanities, Wendy North worked with the children in Marie's Year 4 class to develop a new local geography project for the school. The project aimed to provide a way of involving children in the regeneration of their own community. This theme echoed the changes taking place in the immediate locality through the governments Urban Renaissance strategy.

It became known as the Geography & Creativity project because we wanted to find ways that creative activity and learning could be developed alongside geographical learning. We were supported by a small grant from Wakefield Council Cultural Services (our local arts development agency), which enabled us to appoint an artist to work on the second part of the project. We also benefited from the small grant from the Geographical Association/ DfES that supported local projects.

You can access our ideas and resources, see photos of the school and some of the work the children developed, and our planning by visiting:

The Geography & Creativity Project Website

• Locate Castleford area using Multimap


• Channel 4 - The Castleford Project


• Wakefield Council - Regenerating the Wakefield District


• CABE Education Centre for Architecture and the Built Environment


• Building Connections Education resources from the Lighthouse Project

• Castleford Town Centre October 2004


• Castleford Town Centre February 2005


• Castleford River Aire & Calder Walk May 2005