Rowan Tree School has been nationally feted for its creativity. Its early and very positive involvement with the Creative Partnerships programme led to the headteacher's decision to divert funding to sustain a cadre of artists who work in long-term professional relationships with the teaching staff. The school’s visitors and inspectors note how well the children behave, and how much they enjoy school. No child from the locality is excluded from Rowan Tree, including those with with the most extreme special educational needs, who are over-represented in the community it serves: a suburban estate challenged by poverty, violence and crime. In one year, 52% of the homes in Rowan Tree’s catchment area were burgled; another year, the area had the highest youth crime rate in Europe. The portrait of Rowan Tree shows a school, already strongly committed to loyalty and community-building, opening up the notion of the ‘school family’ to include artists. Through a primary emphasis on learning about craft, process and form rather than creativity or self expression, Rowan Tree seeks to create a resilient community in which the arts support a vision based on constancy, independence and responsibility for children whose lives are often characterised by risk and loss.