Category Archives: Creative Partners

Community Learning and Development, Creative Partners, Health and Wellbeing

No Knives Better Lives

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Peer Education Training – Invitation to Tender

YouthLink Scotland wishes to contract an organisation to design and deliver a peer education training programme to support the Police Scotland Youth Volunteers initiative.

The progamme will offer young people involved in the initiative the opportunity to train as NKBL peer educators and support adult volunteers to develop the programme locally.

Find out more here.

Contact: Jane Dailly, phone: 0131 313 2488 [ e-mail ]

We-CTV Building Positive Relationships Building Safer Communities (National Violence Reduction Competition) – Invitation to Tender

YouthLink Scotland wishes to commission an organisation to further develop and deliver the We-CTV programme across Scotland. We-CTV is a project of the No Knives, Better Lives (NKBL) initiative which is delivered by YouthLink Scotland on behalf of Scottish Government.

For more information click here.

Download a copy of the WE-CTV report here.

Contact: Jane Dailly, phone: 0131 313 2488 [ e-mail ]

Competition, Creative Partners, Literacy and English, Primary schools, Secondary schools, Social Studies

Scotland’s Stories of Home

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Scottish Book Trust has launched an exciting new writing project to encourage pupils and teachers across Scotland to write about what home means to them, with a selection of entries to be published in a free e-publication. Scotland’s Stories of Home will run from 23 March – 30 June, and in that time Scottish Book Trust wants to build a written picture of what Scotland means to the children who live here. Is it your house, your home town, your home team or your homeland? Is it your family, your friends or your online community?  Is it a smell, a taste, a sound or a sensation?

Submissions should be personal pieces of writing about real-life experiences and should be no longer than 1000 words. They can be written in a variety of different forms, such as a story, poem, song lyrics, a rap, a letter or even diary entry, and should be submitted via the Scottish Book Trust website. To help school pupils contribute their responses, Scottish Book Trust has designed a resource pack full of activity suggestions, aimed at primary and secondary school teachers and librarians who would like to use the Scotland’s Stories of Home project in their school. The resources are available at scottishbooktrust.com/storiesofhome.

With enjoyment and choice at the heart, these resources will help pupils of all abilities develop writing, research and talk skills while exploring the objects, places or concepts that mean most to them. A selection of pupils’ stories, chosen by a panel of young people, will be published in a free e-publication available to download during Book Week Scotland 2014.

Community Learning and Development, Creative Partners, Science, Social Studies

Sustainable Arts: Support and Training

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Measuring and reporting your environmental performance is an increasingly critical part of running an arts organisation and/or venue.

Aside from the obvious environmental and cost-saving benefits, improving your environmental performance helps to build stronger relationships with funders, artists, participants, suppliers, touring promoters, staff and audiences.

Creative Carbon Scotland currently works with over 100 arts organisations in Scotland, supporting them to engage with and work towards a more sustainable Scotland. This includes running year-round training workshops and support programmes across Scotland which provide organisations with the tools and knowledge they need to measure and reduce carbon emission from energy, water, waste and travel.

We are keen to ensure that our work is available to as wide a range of arts and cultural organisations as possible and want to hear from any arts organisation, individual artists and venues who would like to make use of this service.

Click here to register with us now to get started or contact Fay Butler at fay@creativecarbonscotland.com to find out more.

We look forward to hearing from you!
Creative Learning, Creative Partners, Creative practitioners, Creativity

Creativity Portal – has it made an impact?

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The Creativity Portal is now 3 years old and we would love to hear from anyone who has used it – has it challenged your idea of creativity? Have you found it useful? Did it lead you to any inspiring resources, research or contacts?

If you have ever visited the Creativity Portal please take the time to answer a 5-minute questionnaire that will allow us to build a picture of what impact the Creativity Portal has made and give direction to its development in the future. Your responses will be invaluable in taking Education Scotland’s support of creative teaching and creative learning forward.

To access the questionnaire click the link below:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/creativityportal2014

Your responses will form a vital piece of evidence for an independent evaluation of the Creativity Portal, led by Consilium Research and Consultancy, which will be published on the Creativity Portal in April/May.

CPD, Creative Partners, Dance, Drama, Music, Primary schools, Secondary schools

Blue Blocks, Going to the Zoo and an orchestral Work-In-Progress

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We’ve got a busy office here at Starcatchers HQ – with our Creative Skills and Expecting Something projects going full speed ahead, and productions of Hup, A Small Story, Blue Block Studio and Yellow Valley all touring over the next few months. For more details, and to marvel at how Starcatchers staff are keeping their sanity (lots of biscuits is the key!), read on! 

Blue Block Studio

Development of Blue Block Studio, our innovative programme of creative play and storytelling for babies and young children, which will be visiting 10 communities across Scotland as part of the     Culture 2014 programme celebrating the Commonwealth Games, is well under way! We’re very excited that some venues are now on sale and others will be joining them very soon.

Blue Block Studio is a space specially designed for babies under 24 months. It is a creative place for babies and their adults to listen, to explore, to build, to watch, to lie down, to look and to touch.  See www.starcatchers.org.uk/things-to-do/blue-block-studio to check which community we’ll be visiting near you!

Performances of Yellow Valley, the musical-storytelling performance created for children aged 2-4 years which will accompany Blue Block Studio, are also on sale, and again more will be added over the coming weeks. See www.starcatchers.org.uk/things-to-do/yellow-valley for more details and venues.

A Small Story

Dates for the Scottish tour of ‘a small story/ eine kleine gesichte’ our co-production with Berlin-based Theater o.N, are now on our website at www.starcatchers.org.uk/things-to-do/small-storyeine-kleine-geschichte-scotland with most venues now available to book!

The show is for children aged 2 and over and is all about the small stories which make up big stories life – love, marriage, babies, friendships, everything! It has been made by Andy Manley and Ania Michaelis with design by Fred Pommerehn and music by Danny Krass.

Don’t miss this opportunity to see this fabulous international performance!

Creative Skills Programme

Our Creative Skills Programme is in full swing! Early years practitioners in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Fife, Inverclyde and South Lanarkshire took part in a What is Creativity? session with Heather at the start of the year and have begun practical sessions delivered by Early Years artists. Sessions have been well attended with early years practitioners from a variety of settings, and early feedback is positive with a high percentage of participants having already started using skills and techniques they’ve learned in the sessions in their own practice.

The HNC Childcare students at Glasgow Kelvin College and Dumfries and Galloway College also continued their training, with music sessions led by Greg Sinclair. The students seem to have carried the same enthusiasm from last year’s sessions into the new year – long may it continue!

So please click here for more information or to sign up.

Expecting Something

We’re more than halfway through our second block of Expecting Something, our project with the Family Nurse Partnership Edinburgh and Lothians. In this block lead artist Sacha Kyle has been looking at the concept of there social and connected mother and baby, and our young mothers, babies and mothers-to-be, have been enjoying relaxing music and movement with various visiting artists. Our mums, their partners, friends or family are also looking forward to the last couple of sessions in this block, where we’ll be going on trips to Edinburgh Botanic Gardens and Edinburgh Zoo! All together now “We’re going to the zoo, zoo, zoo, How about you, you, you…”

For more information on everything that Expecting Something have been up to see Sacha’s blog at http://expectingsomething.wordpress.com.

Nickum

We’re getting closer and closer to the culmination of our Nickum project, in conjunction with the RSNO, and nursery and family centre venues in Aberdeen are now confirmed for the mini-tour of the work-in-progress Hup. Abi and Hazel, our lead artists, along with musicians Liz Lloyd and Andrew Huggan have only had one week of intensive rehearsals but already Hup is coming together and enthralled the 0-24 month audiences who saw shadings at Out of the Blue, Leith and Ashgrove Family Centre, Aberdeen.

To read all about Nickum and Hup see Hazel and Abi’s blog at http://nickumaberdeen.wordpress.com

CPD, Creative Partners, Drama, Primary schools, Secondary schools

Junction 25 Teachers CPD Workshop

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Teachers CPD Workshop

Sunday 30th March 2014 12-6pm

Tashi Gore and Gary Gardiner directors of the most recent Junction 25 show, i’d rather humble than hero lead a creative session designed for teachers and educators.

This one-day workshop aims to explore ways into the devising process alongside ideas of ownership and authorship in making original performance work with young people.

To book a space contact the Tramway box office on 0845 330 3501
Limited spaces available for £15/10

Community Learning and Development, Creative Partners, Creative practitioners, Events, Social Studies

The Rise and Fall of Dunfermline Linen

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a Talk by Hugh Walker
at the NQ Community Centre
7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

This illustrated talk about the history of Dunfermline’s Linen Industry by Hugh Walker is divided into two parts.  In the first half, he describes the process of damask linen weaving and how the beautiful damask tablecloths of 100 years ago were created and manufactured.  In the second half of the talk, Hugh takes the audience on a historical trip round well-known buildings in Dunfermline, tracing the history of the industry from its early beginnings through hand looms to the growth of factories in the second half of the nineteenth century.  The talk concludes with how the industry faired in the 20th century and came to an end in the 1980s.

Click here for more details.

Creative Partners, Creative practitioners, Events, Scotland Colleges

How creative am I?

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Monday 28 April 2014 (10:00 – 15:30)

College Development Network, Argyll Court, Stirling

View Programme and Book Online

The interest in creativity as an essential component of modern life, including education has gone well beyond the creative and expressive arts with wide recognition of its relevance to many areas of life and work including science, technology, leadership and teaching.

A range of research reviewed by Spencer et al (2012) indicates that creativity is regarded as the most important competence required by many employers, and highlight research by Allen et al (2011) on education that declares creativity to be “an attribute that graduates require to successfully engage in contemporary and future professional life”.

Within the context of regionalisation and the Post-16 Education Reform, colleges have been charged with a key role in developing enterprising and creative learners who will benefit from a more flexible, challenging curriculum delivered by motivated and creative staff working in partnership with a range of organisations.

So, how creative are you? This event will focus on the current research on creativity, the policy framework and a range of tools for benchmarking creativity and strategies for developing the habits of a creative mind.

Art, Art and Design, Creative Partners, Creative practitioners, Creativity, Glow TV, Primary schools, Secondary schools

Artist Will McLean Talks to Glow

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27/02/2014 10:45-11:30

What inspires a leading contemporary artist? How does an artist go about his work? How do I develop as an artist? If you’ve ever had questions like these then this is the Glow TV event for you.

As part of the preparation for the MUSA Young Artist Award 2014 renowned Fife-based artist Will Maclean will be talking about his life and work and will be answering YOUR questions.

Will is going to speak briefly about his own work and career before taking your questions.

If you are not able to watch the session live you can submit questions in advance by email for Will to answer.

The MUSA Young Artist Award is an art competition for schools in Fife organised by the Museum of the University of St Andrews.

Schools from all over Scotland are invited to participate in this Glow TV event.

For more information and to register for this event click here. (Glow Login required)