Dumfries and Galloway’s Curriculum Support team have produced a framework document which shows how creativity is a cross-cutting theme of Curriculum for Excellence.
The document helpfully identifies the characteristics of learning environments that encourage creativity.
Download the document here: Creativity in my learning community and learning environments that encourage creativity
How do we help young people retain and develop the creativity skills they naturally enjoy as children?
IDEO has launched a Creative Confidence Challenge to find solutions to address this very issue, inviting proposals for fun, inspiring, new ways to help teenagers and young adults nurture their own creative confidence.
Ideas are being sought by IDEO through a creative open sourcing process – they are seeking the best ideas from around the world, which will be reviewed, refined and evaluated. The whole process starts with the Inspiration phase, which is taking place just now, whereby people can share their own stories, providing inspiration for others.
Visit the Open IDEO website to contribute your own inspirations and ideas, and to watch as the process for selecting the best solutions evolves over the next two months.
Tuesday 17th September, 4.15pm for 4.30pm, St. Joseph’s Academy, Grassyards Road, Kilmarnock, KA3 7SL
Keynote Speaker: Gordon Brown, Brain Juice
Once again the Cultural Co-ordinator Team within East Ayrshire’s Creative Minds Team has successfully secured funding from Creative Scotland and Education Scotland to continue to support our growing movement of professionals championing cultural education in our schools and communities. This promises to be an interesting, informative and enjoyable event providing a platform to connect and collaborate with new partners, generate ideas and make things happen. Please feel free to share this invitation with anyone you think would be interested in coming along or you feel would benefit from taking part. All we ask is that they contact us with their details (name/designation, artist etc/establishment) so we have a handle on numbers. There will, as always, be an opportunity to connect with colleagues, teachers, artists, parents and pupils in a welcoming and friendly environment, enjoy our hospitality and a special preview of St. Joseph’s Academy Art Exhibition.
We will also launch our Creative Learning Opportunities Training Diary for 2013/14 which offers workshops, funding advice, visits and experiences to name only a few, and we invite you to book your creative learning opportunity of choice at the event.
As well as being a successful author, our keynote speaker Gordon Brown, has over 25 years experience in sales and marketing, including 14 years with Bass Brewers and as Director of Brands for the Tennents portfolio. He will share his knowledge and ideas to provoke discussion about the role and importance of creative minds in business and to fully recognise the increased value in teaching and nurturing creativity skills in schools. http://www.gordonjbrown.com/about-2
We hope you will continue to support the network in order to safeguard and shape the future of arts and cultural education in East Ayrshire. Please do not hesitate to get in touch should you require any further information at this time.
Please RSVP eileen.skinner@east-ayrshire.gov.uk to confirm your attendance if you haven’t already done so through Facebook www.facebook.com/CreativeMindsLearningNetwork
Sent on behalf of Helen Duncan, Cultural Co-ordinator and Zara Smith, Dance Motivator
Creative Minds Team, East Ayrshire
The National Parent Forum of Scotland’s Annual Conference for parents/carers will be held on Saturday 5 October 2013 at Bishopbriggs Academy, East Dunbartonshire.
Theme: Health and Wellbeing – this includes everything that helps our children and young people to lead healthy, happy and fulfilling lives.
Keynote Speaker: The Scottish Government’s Minister for Children and Young People, Aileen Campbell MSP, will outline the Government’s plans for Scotland’s children and young people.
Register your interest with LindsayJane.Murray@educationscotland.gov.uk
‘Enspire’ is an exciting new festival taking place on 9 June run entirely by young people in St Joseph’s Academy, Kilmarnock. Inspired by the world famous TED Talks a team of S4 pupils from St. Joseph’s Academy in Kilmarnock have organised their own home-grown festival of ideas: Enspire.
Enspire<http://www.saintjosephsacademy.co.uk/enspire/> is being designed and curated by an S4 Enterprise class who have established an events business called ID Launch. They have been working towards this all year. The purpose of Enspire is simple: to harness energy, creativity and ideas to make a difference by thinking differently. The festival is based around three powerful words: reinvention, inspiration and transformation. All presentations will take as their starting point the themes of reinvention, inspiration or transformation. The festival also features bands, comedy, entertainment and great local food cooked by their pop-up restaurant.
The festival is open to anyone to attend. Please contact St. Joseph’s Academy School Office on 01563 526144 for more information.
A joint event between the Scottish Borders Council and Borders College CLNs’ was held on Thursday 25th April with the aim of building links across the college and local authority networks. Participants came from Primary, Secondary, FE and HE. Phil Orr, Borders College Creative Catalyst and Susanne Batchelor, Scottish Borders Council Creative Learning Manager led this initial session. The first part of the morning was spent looking at creativity in education, locally, nationally and internationally through film clips and presentations.
During the second part of the morning participants worked in groups to generate ideas using the ‘Ideas Trail’ toolkit, developed by UXL Ltd. Each group were given a question about Creativity and were asked to come up with 50 ideas.
The ideas were then narrowed down during group discussions and two ‘Red Hot’ ideas were selected and presented. A general discussion was then held around the next steps and how to continue to develop the network.
Some comments from discussions:
“The creative process is a specialist term which needs an agreed definition so we all know what we’re talking about.”
“I love everything about teaching creatively but I’m really concerned about what exactly to write in my planning folder when my HT (and others I’m sure) expect teachers’ plans to detail every session to the nth degree. Looking forward to discussing it further with others.”
“Listening to like minded people – encouraged that teachers too could share the vision for change.”
“Thinking about my own teaching and that I do teach creatively but there is always room to improve and build on.”
“Networking, learning a strategy for starting creative thinking processes in my class and in other education groups of which I am a part.”
“Discussion of where to go from here and take it back into the work place to develop. Opportunity to share ideas of how to overcome difficulties and promote ideas further”
“Continue to teach creatively and look to improve it, also to try to encourage colleagues to be open to creativity”
NEXT STEPS:
From the ideas generated and from the feedback received, the next steps for the partnership CLNs from Scottish Borders Council and Borders College are:
We were delighted to learn that Paul Collard was impressed by the work we are doing in Scotland following his recent conversation with key players in our drive for a more creative Scotland.
Paul, who is Chief Executive of Creativity, Culture and Education visited Stirling on 17 April at the invitation of Forth Valley Creative Learning and the National Creative Learning Network (NCLN) to share findings from his international work on creativity in learning.
Together with Sheila Page, HMI, he provided inspiring input which stimulated constructive conversations about how we can better support the development of creativity in learners across Scotland.
Paul was particularly impressed by our approach to systemic change and the fact that we have a shared vision across national bodies and local authorities.
“I came away very inspired by what is happening in Scotland. I think you are a long way ahead of almost anywhere I am visiting at the moment. I think that the agenda you are addressing is of fundamental importance to the future of young people in Scotland (and hence the future of Scotland)”.
Discussion focussed on how we can best support creativity in schools – specifically how we can develop supportive approaches which will help teachers plan challenging learning environments that develop creativity skills in learners.
Attendees included members of the National Creative Learning Network; partners involved in developing Scotland’s Creative Learning Plan, led by Creative Scotland, and Education Scotland’s Creativity Review team.
The event was organised in partnership with Forth Valley Creative Learning, who held a twilight session led by Paul Collard: ‘How do we capture and measure creativity?’
For more information on the work of Creativity, Culture and Education, visit their website: http://www.creativitycultureeducation.org/
Kildean Suite, Forth Valley College, Stirling
Thursday, May 9th 2013
4.30pm – 6.30pm
4pm for refreshments and registration
Forth Valley Creative Learning has invited Dr Suzanne Zeedyk to lead the final Creative Conversation in its current programme.
For the past 25 years Suzanne has been an academic researcher, studying babies’ innate ability to communicate and connect with other people. In 1993, Suzanne took up an academic post in the UK as a Developmental Psychologist at the University of Dundee and has remained there since, currently holding the post of Honorary Fellow. She is an inspiring and thought-provoking speaker.
Suzanne has loved what the field of Developmental Psychology has taught her, why it is that a child’s earliest years have such a profound effect on their later years, including their emotional security, their trust in others, their self-confidence, their relationships, their connectivity. Now she wants to help ensure that this knowledge is spread as widely as possible and frequently acts as partner or speaker for a wide range of organisations throughout the UK and abroad including police, educators, health workers, nursery staff, parent groups and children’s theatre groups helping them to better understand the neuroscientific, biological, and psychological evidence concerning the human need for emotional connection, something creativity can be a channel for. Suzanne feels if we overlook emotional connection, then we all pay for it, through the services that governments need to fund such as prisons, mental health programmes, hospitals, fostering arrangements, extra support in schools and other services.
To book a free ticket for the event click on the following link:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/333091
For further information contact:
hoarec@stirling.gov.uk or gayle.martin@falkirk.gov.uk
Further events will be planned for the academic year 2013/14. Please keep a look out on the Forth Valley Creative Learning Website
Fuselab is an out of this world experience for 16-20 year olds at Edinburgh’s
Summerhall in which they’ll plan the future of an uninhabited world.
Fuselab is looking for 80 innovative and creative minds – scientists, artists and
engineers – to help develop a sustainable way of life, free from the
constraints of the systems and structures we live by here on Earth.
Participants will be asked to challenge their thinking through workshops, skills sessions, talks and games; collaborating to design, prototype and test ideas.
FUSELAB 1 1–5 July 2013
FUSELAB 2 5–9 July 2013
Applications for both sessions close on Wednesday 8 May.
40 participants will be selected per session.
Fuselab is completely free of charge, with accommodation and all meals provided.
TO FIND OUT MORE VISIT: sciencefestival.co.uk/fuselab
The third of this series of Creative Conversations (and the first of 2013) will be on Thursday 31st January at 4pm for 4.30 till 5.30pm with wine and canapes afterwards (venue to follow with confirmation of attendance). The Creative Catalyst this session is Tim Brighouse.
Professor Tim Brighouse will share and discuss how encouraging creativity and improving schools has to be a joint effort involving partnership, commitment and shared purpose. That is how Tim Brighouse has worked throughout his career. He has one of the most remarkable track records in education throughout which runs a commitment to creativity in every sense. This is a rare opportunity to engage with Tim Brighouse in a conversation about creativity and how to achieve the best outcomes for young people without compromising the quality of education and experience. Tim will bring wisdom, experience, curiosity and interest – come and join in!
Mike Rosendale (Head of Service Schools and Communities) will provide the welcome and as with all previous Creative Conversations, David Cameron will facilitate the discussion. You are invited to continue the conversations afterwards with Tim, Mike, David and colleagues over wine and canapes!
To book a place, please contact Linda Lees: Linda.Lees@edinburgh.gov.uk
