Breaking expectations inspires creativity, so our recent National Creative Learning Network Development Day was held at Edinburgh Zoo, one in a series of interesting venues including a velodrome (Emirates Arena, Glasgow), Codebase in Falkirk, and Falkland Palace in Fife. Colleagues from Aberdeen and North Lanarkshire talked about programmes of work supported by the Creative Learning Network Fund. Margaret Stewart, Aberdeen City, shared the story of how consistent messaging and building on successful models of practice has resulted in an exciting new venture in a local primary school which has committed to embedding creativity in its practice. Pauline O’Neill, North Lanarkshire Council, shared two innovative DYW projects, one designed for young people ‘at risk’ and the other to support Christmas leavers into positive destinations. Partnerships with local businesses and industry are a strong feature of both projects and contribute to successful outcomes. Presentations from the day can be found here : https://creativityportal.org.uk/?q=edinburgh+zoo

Resources!

Check out Education Scotland’s YouTube channel for our creativity focused animations. There are ten in total which cover a range of topics from ‘Why teach creativity skills?’ to ‘Do creativity skills challenge prejudice and gender bias?’ Find out more.

Big Meet with Ollie Bray

Ollie Bray, former Headteacher of Kingussie High School and now Director/Initiative Lead: Connective Play and Education at The LEGO Foundation, Denmark, recently led a professional learning event in Glasgow. Through active participation, he illustrated how play and creativity are essential elements of engaging learning. He also reflected on Kingussie’s success story, highlighting the importance of bringing creative and innovative approaches to curriculum planning.

You can read more about his work here:

https://www.gtcs.org.uk/News/teaching-scotland/76-bray-the-master-builder.aspx

https://scqf.org.uk/news-blog/blogs/we-can-tackle-the-poverty-gap-one-kid-at-a-time-tes-scotland-article/

https://www.legofoundation.com/media/1664/creating-creators_full-report.pdf

Find out more about the Creative Learning Networks here:
http://bit.ly/CLNsScot

Registration for the Scottish Learning Festival 2019 is now open. Everyone is welcome to attend this free event. This year new features have been introduced, including Twilight sessions for those who can’t make it along during the day.

Articles

Lateral thinking: David Epstein explains how Nintendo’s Game Boy was a case of “lateral thinking with withered technology”

Project Based Learning (PBL) accelerates creativity through sufficiently structuring learning goals and requirements while allowing students to choose between differentiated options. Here’s your very own PBL test drive.

Collaborative Problem Solving : Scotland’s Creative Learning Plan lists Problem-Solving as one of the four core creativity skills. This summary of research literature tells us that when structured well, problems can reinforce knowledge and improve attainment, as well as prepare children for the future workplace.

NEW RESOURCES:

How Can Creativity Support STEM? This two minute animation explores how.

Do you have an interesting piece of practice to share? Please get in touch!

Our recent National Creative Learning Network event focused on the curriculum. We wanted to know what young people think of the totality of the education offer they experience and how it might be improved.

‘The young contributors were fantastic. They were really clear about what they felt they needed from school education and teachers and also about what they had to give’ (participant)

Our two ‘must haves’ were:

• Learner voice – in order that professional dialogue was informed by children and young people’s experiences of education.
• Creativity – it was essential that we adopted creative approaches and delegates were immersed in creative thinking from the outset.

You can read the full story here: How we really listened to learners and find out how to deliver your own Imagine If… event here:
bit.ly/ImagineIfCurriculum

National Creative Learning Network Development Day

This month CLN Coordinators met together at Codebase in Stirling for a development day focused on sharing practice. Colleagues from Edinburgh, West Lothian, Angus and Stirling talked about programmes of work supported by the Creative Learning Fund. The four very different approaches shared prompted rich dialogue and enabled us to explore the importance of long-term  strategy; embedding creative teaching and learning; using creativity to challenge classroom ‘norms’ and a design thinking approach to help practitioners visualise the creative process.

Find out more about the Creative Learning Networks here:
http://bit.ly/CLNsScot

World Creativity and Innovation Day takes place
on Sunday 21 April. How will
you celebrate? We’d love to
hear about your plans!

Enterprising Educator – DEADLINE WEDNESDAY!

Scotland’s Enterprising Schools has been working in
partnership with CREATE and
the University of the Highlands and Islands to launch the ‘Enterprising Educator’: a fully funded and accredited Masters-level module for Scottish Practitioners. You can find all the course information here. The application deadline is noon on 28th March.

Articles

Author Angie Lake explains  why STEM and arts subjects are both important in the world – you might find this a useful article to share with young people.

Head of Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, Libby Curtis, discusses the importance of creativity and culture within society.

Finland, Switzerland and New Zealand lead the way at teaching skills for the future. Read more about the provision of future skills education here.

NEW RESOURCES:

How Do We Assess Creativity Skills?

This two minute animation explores how.
http://bit.ly/AssessCreativity

Foundation Apprenticeships

This quick guide offers helpful information for educational practitioners to learn more about Foundation Apprenticeships, the benefits they offer pupils and how schools in Scotland are delivering them.

Parent Toolkit

Children, now more than ever, need to understand how to evaluate changing information, respond creatively when problems arise, and be prepared for the jobs and opportunities of the future. Parent Toolkit offers some suggestions to help build learners’ cognitive flexibility.

Do you have an interesting piece of practice to share? Please get in touch!

‘Creativity is a process which generates ideas that have value to the individual. It involves looking at familiar things with a fresh eye, examining problems with an open mind, making connections, learning from mistakes and using imagination to explore new possibilities.’

The Big Question: Do we have a shared understanding of creativity between learners, teachers, senior leaders, parents and employers?

Future-proofing their education

The Future of Education and Skills : Education 2030 project is aimed at helping countries find answers to two far-reaching questions:

• What knowledge, skills, attitudes and values will today’s students need to thrive and shape their world?
• How can instructional systems develop these knowledge, skills, attitudes and values effectively?

This position paper describes the first results from this work.

We ♥ mistakes!

“A life spent making mistakes is not only most honourable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing” – George Bernard Shaw

Inspiring Moments

South Lanarkshire’s Creative Learning Network embarked on the local authority’s first teacher swop. Taking an open-minded approach, a nursery teacher and a primary teacher worked together to challenge their own teaching styles.

Do you have an interesting piece of practice to share? Please get in touch!

The kaleidoscope was invented in1817 by Scottish inventor David Brewster.

Can creativity be assessed?

The OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) is working on the completion of a rubric to assess skills including creativity and critical thinking which may contribute to the development of a module on creativity for PISA 2021.

Spotlight on SLF

Creativity and innovation were strong themes at the recent Scottish Learning Festival, featuring in keynotes including those from the Deputy First Minister, Jo Boaler and Jamie Gallagher. The positive impact of creativity in curriculum design was evident in the seminar presented by St. Albert’s Primary and Castlebrae High School, the winners of this year’s Scottish Education Awards.

In her book Mathematical Mindsets, Jo Boaler reminds us that by going into challenging situations where we mess up and fail, we help our brains to grow.

NEW RESOURCES NOW AVAILABLE!

Eight short animations exploring creativity in learning, teaching, assessment, STEM and employability will be available on the National Improvement Hub and the Creativity Portal. You can preview them here on Youtube:

bit.ly/creativityanimations