A Creative Conversation in progress
In an article originally published in Teaching Scotland, Arts and Creative Learning Manager Linda Lees describes how her growing network of Creative Conversations is helping educators to unlock their creativity.
Creative Conversations is our strategic approach to developing the Creative Learning Network, and is funded by Education Scotland and Creative Scotland.
Creative Conversations asks the questions:
- What do we mean by creative learning within Curriculum for Excellence?
- How do the arts and culture support creative learning – what are the core capacities of creativity that the arts can help develop?
- What are we doing to further the agenda?
- How do we know if learners are developing creativity skills and attributes?
The overall aim of Creative Conversations is to develop creative leaders and practitioners, contributing to improved outcomes for children and young people.
Creativity is dear to the hearts of artists, musicians and writers, but scientists, mathematicians, linguists, historians, plumbers and engineers are also creative.
When Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) emerged, arts and cultural organisations did not need to be persuaded of the value of education, but perhaps the education sector did need persuasion of the value of the arts.
That the arts are not the sole domain of creativity is increasingly accepted, but they can help teachers and learners understand and unlock the creative process. In the 2000s, local authority Cultural Co-ordinators and Creative Links Officers were tasked with delivering high-quality arts education projects. What it lacked was a locally strategic approach. The ability to capture learning and build capacity within the context of CfE and Getting it Right was inconsistent across Scotland.
When the funding ended, the Scottish Arts Council (now Creative Scotland) and Learning and Teaching Scotland (now Education Scotland) wanted to learn from the Cultural Coordinator programme and share the benefits more widely. In 2010, Scotland’s Ministers for Culture, Education and Schools, jointly signed off Education, the Arts, Culture and Creativity: an Action Plan, which was launched at the Scottish Learning Festival.
At the same time, the Creativity Portal was launched, a one-stop shop where educators can find out about learning offered by arts and cultural organisations and share ideas.
Creative Scotland and Education Scotland initiated the Creative Learning Networks and each local authority was encouraged to apply for funding.
Since 2010, these networks have been successfully raising the profile of creativity, the arts and culture in education. The highly successful Creative Conversations approach in Edinburgh has been picked up in other areas.
Linda Lees began developing Creative Conversations in 2011/12. It has engaged more than 600 practitioners from most schools in the city, as well as arts organisations, HE/FE, CLD, senior managers within the authority and colleagues from other areas.
Linda’s aim was to offer people the space and permission to engage in professional dialogue about creativity and learning. She narrowed her own creative experiences; one being the process of thinking, planning, making and refining work (usually, but not always, alone); the other being the generation of ideas (usually, but not always, with others) and the interplay between them. She also recalled the frustration of attending events where speakers ended on a high note, then everyone left with no way of discussing and acting upon the ideas.
Linda invited David Cameron, Education Consultant and former Director of Children’s Services at Stirling Council, to help identify people from the education and arts sectors to act as Creative Catalysts and inspire others.
The first Creative Conversation was held in February 2012 in the Netherbow Theatre, with senior managers and head teachers invited. Why creativity is important in education was the theme, with the title ‘This could be the Start of Something Big’ (Ella Fitzgerald) and the conversation was lively and stimulating.
Each Creative Conversation is held in a cultural venue in Edinburgh and begins at 4pm. Each meeting leads to a more informal chat with a glass of wine. Creative Catalysts have included: Keir Bloomer; Angus Fraquhar (conceptual and community artist); Graham Tydeman (Consultant Paediatrician); Heather Reid OBE; Frank Crawford; Laurie O’Donnell; Jim Elder (Apple Education); Ollie Bray; Jem Anderson; National Theatre; Sir Tim Brighouse, Don Leddingham; and Eric Booth.
Each Creative Conversation has a high-level theme, which have included creative approaches to self evaluation and inspection, flipped classroom, creative leadership and the role of the arts in creativity. All have been excellent professional learning for practitioners.
To find out more about Creative Conversations, e-mail: Linda.Lees@edinburgh.gov.uk.
This article was originally published in issue 53 (Feb/March 2014) of Teaching Scotland, the flagship magazine of the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTC Scotland).
