An imaginative learning programme which has brought inspiration into school lessons across the Bradford district has been hailed as a success.

Some 300 children and their teachers converged upon Victoria Hall in Saltaire yesterday to celebrate three years of the Government funded Creative Partnerships programme in Bradford.

A total of £3.5million has been poured into the scheme since it started in Bradford three years ago.

Members of the Partnership have been working alongside teachers at 21 schools to boost creativity in the classroom.

Ranging from nurseries to secondary schools, the chosen schools have benefited from funding by the Arts Council England to transform traditional study into an active and enlivened experience which captures the imagination of pupils and teachers.

The aim of the project is to make young people more creative, confident and ambitious.

With help from Creative Partnerships, pupils at Beckfoot School in Bingley were taught the concept of The Big Bang through dance.

Schoolchildren at Our Lady of Victories RC Primary in Keighley set up their own radio station, receiving a grant to pay for microphones, a mixing desk and a media player.

The pupils broadcast every Friday from a studio in a former cloakroom and even produce podcasts available to download from the school website.

Learning under the programme engages better with today's children, according Bradford Creative director, Francesca Canty.

She said: "Young people have so many stimuli, chatting to their friends, downloading music, texting and playing games, so if we want to stick them in a classroom for 30 minutes and get them to concentrate on a piece of writing or something, they are not used to it and they are going to get bored.

"It's the same stuff they are covering but it's the way they do it that's a lot more fun for everyone, including the teacher. Education seemed to be something we gave and they absorbed but this way the children are so much more switched on."

Children's television presenter, Angellica Bell, introduced a series of films and speakers at Victoria Hall and explained what the project has meant for pupils in Bradford.

A school governor herself, she said: "When I was at school I never thought I would be anything so if this is a way of children to be more expressive and to feel more empowered then that's a great thing.

"I hated physics, if you asked me to repeat the periodic table there'd be no chance, but if you taught me it in a funky way then that's clever because it's more memorable.

"If it's more fun there is more chance that children will take up the subject because they enjoy it."

Creative Partnerships operates in 36 areas of the country and is hoping to build on its success in Bradford by opening up the programme to cover 40 schools in and around the district next year.