LONDON.- 70,000 schoolchildren from 125 schools the length and breadth of the UK are going to be experiencing world class works of art in their classrooms as part of the largest ever sculpture project undertaken in Britain.

Over the next two years, Art UK is aiming to digitise around 170,000 sculptures, which are located inside galleries, museums and public buildings and outdoors in parks, streets and squares, the length and breadth of the UK. These will then be displayed on the free-to-access artuk.org website for enjoyment, learning and research – the first database of its kind in the world.

As with the previous Art UK digitisation initiative – which saw 212,000 oil paintings reproduced online - a key part of the project is getting more children to engage with art. Therefore, during October 2013, works by artists such as Gainsborough, L. S. Lowry, Monet and Turner visited twenty-five schools across the UK where they were enjoyed by 15,000 children.

Andrew Ellis, Art UK Director, said “Masterpieces in Schools was such a huge success back in 2013, so obviously we wanted to do something similar again, but this time give even more children the opportunity to interact with great art. Our sculpture in school’s initiative will be five times bigger – and hopefully even more rewarding – than what we achieved last time round.”

125 schools and 125 collections will take part in Masterpieces in Schools between now and May 2020: five schools and five collections in each of the 25 Art UK project regions. This activity will take sculpture out of museums and into classrooms to engage children with masterpieces of art and encourage teachers to use sculpture to illustrate, enliven and inspire their teaching around art and design and other Key Stage 1-4 subjects.

The first loan took place this week to Pinders Primary School in Wakefield. In early June, 30 pupils from Year 3 visited the Arts Council Collection Sculpture Centre at Longside, which is located within the grounds of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. After seeing the collection and talking to staff, together they picked Phillip King’s 1965 sculpture Point X to be the one to visit their school.

Natalie Rudd, Senior Curator, Arts Council Collection said “The Arts Council Collection remit is to be seen as widely as possible and so taking artworks into schools through the Art UK scheme is the perfect way to extend our reach to our youngest of audiences. We were particularly impressed by how thoughtful the students were when choosing the artwork that would be coming into their school. They considered the fact that the work had to have impact, would need to be easily seen by up to 30 children at any one time and considered what would be appealing to both nursery school pupils and parents and governors. The students were given a wide selection of works to choose from but they felt that ‘Point X’ by Philip King would be well received and understood on many levels by their student peers.”

On 14 June, Point X came to Pinders Primary for the day and was on display in the school hall. Exactly which sculpture was visiting had been kept secret by Year 3 and was revealed to the rest of the school on arrival. All 240 pupils in the school had a chance to see the artwork and each class took part in a workshop with a chance to ask lots of questions.

The pupils at Pinders Primary clearly enjoyed their day -“I felt special and proud to help choose the artwork for the other kids. It felt like we got to be teachers” said one pupil; another added “I liked the sculpture because I have never seen one that big before.” There were also comments such as “Today has made me want to do more art.”

Pinders Primary Headteacher Lorna Kemplay said “What a fantastic opportunity to share national art works with our children. A very well organised team have liaised with school in order to bring the world of Sculpture literally to our door. Art is a very important part of children’s education and needs to be kept alive and real. In the words of Picasso ‘Every child is an artist’."

The Masterpieces in Schools programme is being made possible thanks to generous grants from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the Heritage Lottery Fund.