In todays integrated arts inputs we explored the concept of arts in the school environment, in particular, embedding creativity into our pedagogy. Through Curriculum for Excellence it is now possible for a school to be assessed against how creative they are, as of now, there has only ever been one school to have chosen to be assessed against the criteria of creativity. Why is this? Are schools simply choosing to ignore creativity?

This mornings lecture made me think deeper into the elements which contribute to a creative classroom environment and the importance of having your own methodology, instead of just simply copying the work of others. The potential for creativity within a classroom is largely reliant on the relationships teachers build with the children, the style in which they teach, the level of enthusiasm they bring into the classroom, the interests and knowledge the teacher has and their pedagogy. I was told on the first day of Integrated arts, that as a teacher, it is fundamental that we have a tolerance for both ambiguity and mess, both of these are at the framework for opening up opportunities for our class to be truly creative. In the words of Ken Robinson

“If you are not prepared to be wrong, you can never be original” (Ken Robinson 2007)

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value, simply giving our class a mediocre task of copying an artists work to the exact does not promote creativity, in fact far from it. Doing tasks such as this streamline the outcome and therefore hold back the children from adding any real individual artist flare to their work. Ken Robinsons ted talk explores this concept of streamlining results, and he shares the concept that educational systems see mistakes as the worst thing to possibly happen (Ken Robinson 2007). In doing so they are educating children out of their creative capacities and steering them towards a life time of refusing to stand out in fear of being wrong.

Our education system focuses so heavily on academic ability, placing subjects at order of importance. The subjects deemed most important are those which are useful at work such as maths and English, with the arts being placed at the bottom and children in later education being steered away from following a career in the arts because ‘you simply wont ever get a job in the arts’.

My workshops today in both music and arts have shown me just how simple it is to incorporate creative learning into the curriculum and has also highlighted the many benefits that follow.

In music, we explored the programme Charanga. This is a music programme which covers the years primary 1 through to primary 7. It is a very interactive app which allows for the children to get involved in keeping the beat, creating their own beats, making music to songs and singing. This programme goes as far as to give teachers lesson plans to accompany each topic, for example Mamma Mia is one topic, this has topics 1-7 (each topic includes a wealth of activity and will take some time to cover), Each of these have an in-depth lesson plan included which really leaves no room for excuses such as I wouldn’t know how to teach it. It is something I thoroughly enjoyed exploring and will most definitely be using within my classroom. This is one of the many ways creativity can be explored through music, this programme gives children the opportunity to speed up tempos, create their own rhythms and even perform their finished work.

Here are some of the experiences and outcomes covered by this lesson:

• I have the freedom to use my voice, musical instruments and music technology to discover and enjoy playing with sound and rhythm. EXA 0-17a
• I can use my voice, musical instruments and music technology to experiment with sounds, pitch, melody, rhythm, timbre and dynamics. EXA 2-17a
• I can use my voice, musical instruments and music technology to discover and enjoy playing with sound, rhythm, pitch and dynamics. EXA 1-17a

(Scottish Government, 2008)

In art, we were given a picture to look at and discuss with a partner about what we thought the underlying message of this image was. Here is the image we received

Instead of the mediocre feedback to a friend, we were given the task of videoing ourselves discussing the concepts we had pulled from the picture. This is our vlog

This is a really simple way to get the children to be creative when recording and presenting their work. Each and every vlog would be different, the concepts the children chose to explore and their own opinions will really come through on video in comparison to 30 exact copies of the same written response to one image.

Without creativity, this world would be a very dull and unexciting place. I want the children in my care to explore their full creative potential and to never shy away from being wrong. Our education system is currently streamlining our children’s minds in the way that we have mined the planet for a single material. This will fail us in the future, and I want to enforce change.

References 

Robinson,K. (2007) Do schools kill creativity? Ted talk [Online] Avaliable https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity [Accessed 30/10/2019]

Scottish government. (2008). Expressive Arts Experiences and Outcomes [online] available : https://education.gov.scot/documents/expressive-arts-eo.pdf [Accessed 30/10/19]