1. The capacity to generate ideas; things that have value to the individual.
2. Looking at things with a fresh eye; examining problems with an open mind; making connections; learning from mistakes and using the imagination to explore new possibilities.
‘A more creative Scotland can only be realised through creative responses to all challenges, across society, at every level. Achieving this will take the e orts of everyone who is passionate about learning, from policy-makers and teachers to professional creative people.’ To help facilitate this education authorities across scotland were funded to develop Creative Learning Networks.
Four Creativity Skills were focused on
Imagination
Problem solving
Curiosity
Open Mindedness
Creativity skills include
Being curious
Registering patterns and anomalies
Drawing on previous knowledge
Researching productively
Formulating good questions
Defining problems
Exploring multiple viewpoints
Functioning with uncertainty
Lateral thinking
Hypothesising
Synthesising and refining multiple options and viewpoints
Inventing
Crafting, delivering and presenting solutions
Applying discipline and resilience
Evaluating impact and success of solutions
Identifying next steps in refinement or development process
Trinity Primary School in Hawick decided to run a Creativity Week; how did it go and what free the challenges?
They set up a small planning group to discuss the idea and decided to explore the theme of ‘The future’ They planned to work across the year groups and classes, taking account of Building the Curriculum 3 (BtC3)
‘The curriculum should include space for learning beyond subject boundaries, so that children and young people can make connections between different areas of learning. Interdisciplinary studies, based upon groupings of experiences and outcomes from within and across curriculum areas, can provide relevant, challenging and enjoyable learning experiences and stimulating contexts to meet the varied needs of children and young people’
We are delivering the Small Grants Fund in the Borders on behalf of Creative Scotland The £50,000 programme will support local musicians and artists to lead activities in music, visual art or moving image. The projects will take place in our schools and youth groups during 2021, with a focus on young people who often miss out on creative activities.
Working in partnership with YouthBorders and supporting local community priorities, the programme will fund around 10 projects across our 5 locality areas.
The programme will be led by Creative Learning Officer, Kevin Greenfield. “We are very pleased to have secured this funding and it will encourage our young people to create and be creative; through a hands-on, practical approach, that reinforces confidence and develops their own voice through the arts and music. We hope the workshops will also encourage the young people to keep up their creative activity beyond the life of the projects, supporting positive wellbeing”
SBC is the only organisation in the south of Scotland to have secured this programme. We will promote the fund early in the New Year and work with YouthBorders to assess which projects to support. The programme will complement work delivered under the Education department’s Youth Music Initiative and YouthBorders YouthWork Recovery projects.
The Durham Commission was a collaboration between Arts Council England and Durham University, which was set up to examine how creativity, and in particular creative thinking, across the curriculum is supported by the current education system.
It looked wider than the trading expression of creative activist such as the arts and music to include how it can be seen and valued in the STEM subjects.
The report highlighted that creativity skills are key to equipping our young people for their later life and work, in an ever changing world.
Following 18 months of research, the Commission produced a report and recommendations, to promote good practice, highlight gaps and promote long term step change in how creativity in used within education.
For more information on the future world of work explore some of the projects and research by organisations such as the RSA and Nesta
Creativity is the key to education, so why aren’t we pursuing it?
With an innovation problem in the UK’s economy, many children being disengaged with education and a desire for user-led services, now is the time to aggressively support creativity in schools.
Creativity in schools isn’t just restricted to the teaching of “creative” subjects; art, English etc. In fact even that definition of what subjects are creative is a misstatement of what creativity can mean. Sir Ken Robinson, the go to man on issues of creativity in schools, has previously written about an interview he did with Hans Zimmer, the Oscar winning composer. Apparently Zimmer was a disruptive child at school; he was thrown out of eight of them. When he got to the ninth, the head teacher took him to one side and spoke to him, trying to figure out how to get Zimmer involved in education. Zimmer said he liked music and so the head teacher organised for him to study music, which went onto improve his performance and engagement across all subjects and led to his successful career.
The creativity we see in this example isn’t only the music that the music that Hans Zimmer played, but also the teaching method. The head teacher was creative in their teaching methods, something which is sadly becoming more and more difficult in a heavily regulated teaching environment. It’s the strange paradox of the coalition’s education that they pursue a top-down approach whilst also crying ‘autonomy’ while they let groups set up free schools.
One current political trend is for localism; bottom-up politics. We can see it in the push for greater devolution (particularly amongst proponents of a constitutional convention) and in the movement for patient-led services. Creativity can provide this trend with a home in education; teachers who are able to determine their own teaching methods in response to what children want and need. School is a notoriously divisive experience for people, with many disengaging entirely with it. Surely if the way in which they were taught was responsive and creative, students will respond better to education.
This idea touches upon one of the core tenets of creativity; self-determination. Creativity gives a voice to a person’s thoughts, whether it be in writing a song or developing some new software for internal company use. It also, despite prejudices suggesting otherwise, contributes to the economy. A recent experiment saw that science students outperformed arts students on a creative writing task. You might think this backs up Nicky Morgan’s point, when in fact it does the complete opposite because the experiment showed the value of creative thought of scientists in their workplace. The creativity and innovation of these scientists push forward the organisations they work for, instilling the atmosphere of a startup company, the small businesses of which the coalition government is so proud.
The perspective that Nicky Morgan has on the humanities and arts (and by the way shouldn’t she be doing something about employment prospects?) is representative of a wider problem that government has with creativity. Nicky Morgan’s predecessor Michael Gove was fond of saying that creativity could only come off the back of formal education in topics like grammar and David Cameron has expressed his preference for a UK film industry that produces more blockbusters like Harry Potter and less independent films. These men have shown that the coalition doesn’t get creativity, it isn’t just about producing Hollywood blockbuster’s or forcing children to write grammatically correct haikus; it’s about expression, innovation and self-determination. If the government can’t see the economic, political and societal benefits to a creative education, then perhaps they need to think a bit more creatively.
Dan Holden leads on political research at ComRes. He tweets @DanSHolden.
Our Authors in Schools project is run in collaboration with the award winning bookshop Mainstreet Trading, in St Boswells. The event brings along well know children authors who deliver engaging talks to encourage reading and speak the children imagination.
The authors speak to classes and assemblies at the school, talking about their work, writing style and answering questions. Sometimes a number of small schools have joined together in one host school, which receives a class set of the author’s book. The enthusiasm brought by the authors inspires the children and brings the book to life, encouraging reading and discussions around characters and plot lines. The class teachers usually includes the visit as part of wider literacy activity, such as the children writing their own stories, producing artwork or learning different styles of writing.
Some of the schools have is also visited by a mobile bookshop, in the back of a converted a Citroen H Van. A surprising number of children have never been into a bookshop and this can be due to location, few rural villages or towns have one, or a reluctance to go into one due barriers such as cost, elitism, the type of book available. The book van allows young people to experience a mini bookshop space where they can meet the books author, which help them engage with that story. The ambition of the project is that every child in the Borders meets an author during their primary school years.
Over the course of the project there has a been a wide range of authors including Micheal Morpurgo, Piers Torday, Cloe Inkpen, Emma Carol, Alom Shaha, Chris Ryan, Lyn Garnier, Helen Peters, David Solomons, Danny Scott, Lari Don.
Under the Authors in School project we invited science teacher and author Alom Shaha . He delivered exciting practical talks to open the pupils minds to science, using some suitable funny and amazing experiments.
Music is a great way to deliver many elements of the Emerging Literacy curriculum especially the phonological awareness. Children should have daily opportunities to sing songs and action rhymes developing a wide repertoire of songs and rhymes.
Auditory Discrimination is the ability to differentiate sounds and is a vital pre-reading and pre-writing skills. Hearing songs sung again and again can help build this skill.
Rhyming and Alliteration. Rhyming is another form of auditory discrimination. Children need to be able to hear the rhyme and be able to generate their own. Songs are full of rhymes and alliteration.
Auditory Memory (hearing information, processing it, retaining it, and then later recalling it) This is a crucial skill that can be improved upon with activities. Singing is one of them
Give children multisensory experiences such as action songs in which the children have to add claps, knee pats, foot stamps, or move in a particular way as well as adding body percussion to nursery rhymes.
Give children opportunities to experience being attentive and knowing when to add sounds or move and when to be still.
Emerging Literacy – Phonological Awareness. On the Highland Literacy website you can click on the different aspects of the progression to access lots of ideas for how to support children’s acquisition of these skills.
Use these videos from our Borders YMI (Youth Music Initiative)Barbara,
team to support your children’s phonological awareness.
Singing also supports children learning new vocabulary and concepts through the repetition of words and verses. It provides an excellent language model allowing children to hear the constriction of phrases and sentences and begin to understand the syntax of our language. Songs and rhymes support children developing theformation of different sounds in a fun, actively involved way.
Action songs help children learn new vocabulary as they can visualise the word.
Use these warm up exercises to support children’s formation of sounds.
Songs and rhymes which involve children crossing the midline (invisible central line of the body) as well as having an awareness of where their body is (proprioception) all support pre-writing skills. Songs which encourage finger dexterity and independent movement support the fine motor control needed to write.
Join in with the action songs videos on the Borders YMI Youtube channel – YMI Making music.
Concepts of Printis the wide range of knowledge and understanding, which children build up over a period of time to develop an understanding and enjoyment of books and reading.
As you know, a lot of opportunities should be provided for children to engage with books that fire their imagination and interest. Enjoying and sharing books leads to children seeing them as a source of pleasure and interest and motivates them to value reading.
Why not have a go adding music to stories?
Encourage the children to play their instruments in different ways . For example, make this instrument sound like a Gruffalo walking…, a dragon roaring…or a fish swimming’
Ask them for their own suggestions for different characters (e.g. How might the characters in the Gingerbread Boy story sound as they run after the gingerbread boy?) Through the retelling of the story, children could be responsible for creating the different sound effects.
Alternatively learn to rap familiar stories . For example try out making a Gruffalo Rap
Realising the Ambition
In this Education Scotland document we find on pages 72 to 73the following statements.
As a baby -Use natural resources, musical instruments, books and toys which make sounds and noise with me, encouraging me to listen for and distinguish between sounds.
As a toddler – Encourage me to explore, distinguish and react to sounds in the environment with you.
Play with language – encouraging me to have fun investigating and experimenting with words, rhymes, songs and musical instruments.
As a young child – Encourage me to notice patterns, similarities and differences in sounds and words.
Play with language – encouraging me to have fun investigating and experimenting with words, rhymes, songs and musical instruments, drawing attention to familiar words, phrases and names in my environment.
Links to Resources & Information
You can subscribe to the YMI Borders YouTube Channel where we have playlists and learning videos from all the tutors.
For teachers and support staff you can access our YMI Making Music Team pages on Glow. If you are not already member of the Team you can request access.
This lesson idea uses singing to support numeracy in Early Years settings. You can download them as backing tracks to play in your setting or use the video’s on iPads and Smartboards.
There are three songs counting to Five and one counting to Ten. Whilst singing might not be possible due to current restrictions the songs can still be played and the videos watched to reinforce learning.
Here are two of the videos and the other versions of the song can be viewed on our YMI Borders YouTube Channel Early Years playlist
MP3 Tracks
Backing – Five Little Squirrels
Vocal – Five Little Squirrels
Backing – Ten Little Raindrops
Vocal – Ten Little Raindrops
Learning Resources
To download files right click on the links and then select either:‘
On the YMI Resource Page you can find songsheets, MP3 tracks and worksheets for all our Blog posts.
For teacher and school staff with access to GLOW more Early Years information and all the files can be downloaded from our YMI Making Music team pages and from our YMI Sharepoint. Use the code wjimn8l to join the team if you are not already a member.
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Trinity Primary School in Hawick decided to run a Creativity Week; how did it go and what free the challenges?
