creativity

July 8, 2016 by Emese Hall and Penny Hay

The power of the arts in primary schools

The arts are essential in life. They can shape and define who we are and how we understand ourselves and our possible selves. It is a travesty that in some quarters the arts in schools are increasingly regarded as unnecessary. We see dance, drama, music and visual arts as fundamental to cultural engagement and personal development. Artistic experience fuels imagination and in turn imagination fuels creativity. Within CPR’s curriculum framework, the arts are linked to creativity as one of eight essential curriculum domains – although CPR emphasises that creativity is not regarded as exclusive to the arts.

The instrumental argument for the inclusion of the arts in education is that they foster transferable skills and boost overall academic achievement, leading to better future work opportunities, enhanced well-being and self-esteem. In contrast, the essentialist view, underlined in an earlier blog from Robin Alexander, is that the arts are valuable for their own sake and should not just be seen merely as tools for other kinds of learning. Elliot Eisner’s ten lessons the arts teach resonate beautifully with CPR’s aims. They propose that the arts provide space for personal judgement; help problem-posing and thinking outside the box; promote diversity, respect and intercultural understanding; show that making mistakes can be liberating and open up new opportunities; encourage looking at details and thinking in depth; allow the creation of a personal reality; provide therapeutic benefits and support emotional literacy and make us feel alive.

Children don’t experience learning as separate parcels of knowledge to be opened. They flow from one form, with different ways of exploring and expressing, to another. They use what Loris Malaguzzi calls ‘100 languages’. In relation to CPRT’s values and vision, we suggest that positive connections between the arts, as well as non-arts subjects, can maximise creative learning. Although we may more commonly talk about learning in and through different art forms, the work of Lars Lindström usefully draws attention to also learning about and with the art form. These distinctions emphasise a wonderful world of possibilities for both teaching and learning.

However, promoted by the DfE, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) Teaching and Learning Toolkit tells us that arts participation has low impact on ‘academic learning’. This worries us on two counts: firstly, the type of research approaches used to gather this evidence can never fully capture the subtle qualities of learning in the arts; secondly, it is grossly inaccurate to imply that the arts are non-academic. Also, we are deeply troubled when it is seen as perfectly acceptable to relegate the arts to extra-curricular activity, seemingly the view taken in the DfE White Paper Educational Excellence Everywhere. In any event, evidence from a much larger body of research than the single project cited by EEF shows that arts education does indeed have a positive and significant ‘academic’ impact.

Our work with the South West Research Schools connects closely to four of CPRT’s priorities: community, curriculum, voice and pedagogy. These schools are fully committed to providing rich and stimulating learning experiences and recognise that the arts have much to offer in contributing to this aspiration.

In the Power of the Arts event recently held at Bath’s Royal Literary and Scientific Institute, six of CPRT’s South West Research Schools shared their research findings to date, which led to wider discussions about teaching and learning in the arts and, more generally, a creative school ethos. Significant messages arising from the discussions underlined the importance of both teachers and children learning as researchers, and the potential of working with the ‘habits of mind’ of artists and creative professionals to develop creative learning skills.

David Allinson, Head Teacher of St Vigor and St John Primary School, Chilcompton, Somerset talked about:

… believing in children’s ideas, with research as a habit of mind – catching learning. We became fascinated in how children’s drawings help them to put ideas together and grow – in how can ideas be revealed, connected and grow through drawing. Some important things came out from what we saw. The children’s language was more developed, their imagination had grown into a fantastical language, children were catching ideas from each other. The ideas changed because we gave children time, we gave them space to do it in, and gave them attention from a teacher who was very interested in what they were doing, showed attention by writing things down, taking photos. As teachers we need to step back and ask questions about the things that fascinate us. We saw the story unravelling – we were then interested in how we could give children the time space and attention they needed.

Professor Nick Sorensen, Associate Dean, Institute for Education, Bath Spa University closed the day:

Thank you to the primary head teachers who have generously shared their innovative approaches to learning, teaching and professional development, showing how artists and teachers work together to increase children’s self-esteem, self-confidence and independence with the vision to expand the imaginative potential of children and supporting them to become independent learners.

Post Brexit, here is much healing that has to be done and what you’re doing is really important work. Artists and teachers are united by the fact that they are social beings; their actions have an impact on what happens in society and they reflect what is going on in society. The work that you, and others, are doing takes on a much broader significance and importance given that the context we are working in has changed radically.

What I am interested in is practice, in what great artists and teachers do. Practice doesn’t exist in isolation but comes out of a culture. We need to engage in a process of analysis not just to document that what we do which is of value, but to collectively legitimise those practices that may appear to be marginal in order to resolve the tensions between policy expectations and practical realities, between a restricted and restrictive National Curriculum and the stuff that children immediately recognise as ‘real learning’. We need to be able to provide evidence for those practices that foster understanding, cooperation, cross-cultural perspectives and cross-disciplinary learning.

5x5x5=creativity aspires to research and support creativity in children’s learning to increase their aspirations and life skills. Partnerships between schools and cultural organisations are essential at this time, as we need to draw on our collective imagination to make a real difference to children’s lives. With determination and a growing sense of community and shared endeavour, we can together ensure that children’s experiences of primary school are enlivened and enriched by the arts.

We agree with artist Bob and Roberta Smith, that ‘art makes children powerful’ and would add that it can also make teachers, as learning and research partners, powerful too.

Emese Hall (University of Exeter) and Penny Hay (Bath Spa University) jointly co-ordinate CPRT’s South West regional network, which includes the South West Research Schools Network and its current focus on the arts and creativity in primary schools. Contact them here for more information.

October 30, 2015 by Robin Alexander

Face the music

Opera North has reported dramatic improvements in key stage 2 test results in two primary schools, one in Leeds, the other in Hull, and both in areas deemed severely deprived. ‘Dramatic’ in this instance is certainly merited: in one of the schools the proportion of children gaining level 4 in reading increased from 78 per cent in 2014 to 98 per cent in 2015, with corresponding increases in writing (75 to 86 per cent) and mathematics (73 to 93 per cent).

But what, you may ask, has this to do with opera? Well, since 2013 the schools in question – Windmill Primary in Leeds and Bude Park Primary in Hull – have been working with Opera North as part of the Arts Council and DfE-supported In Harmony programme. This aims ‘to inspire and transform the lives of children in deprived communities, using the power and disciplines of community-based orchestral music-making.’ Opera North’s In Harmony project, now being extended, is one of six, with others in Gateshead, Lambeth, Liverpool, Nottingham and Telford. In the Leeds project, every child spends up to three hours each week on musical activity and some also attend Opera North’s after-school sessions. Most children learn to play an instrument and all of them sing. For the Hull children, singing is if anything even more important. Children in both schools give public performances, joining forces with Opera North’s professional musicians. For the Leeds children these may take place in the high Victorian surroundings of Leeds Town Hall.

Methodological caution requires us to warn that the test gains in question reflect an apparent association between musical engagement and standards of literacy and numeracy rather than the proven causal relationship that would be tested by a randomised control trial (and such a trial is certainly needed). But the gains are sufficiently striking, and the circumstantial evidence sufficiently rich, to persuade us that the relationship is more likely to be causal than not, especially when we witness how palpably this activity inspires and sustains the enthusiasm and effort of the children involved. Engagement here is the key: without it there can be no learning.

It’s a message with which for many years arts organisations and activists have been familiar, and which they have put into impressive practice. To many members of Britain’s principal orchestras, choirs, art galleries, theatres and dance companies, working with children and schools is now as integral to their day-to-day activity as the shows they mount, while alongside publicly-funded schemes like In Harmony, the Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts pursues on an even larger scale the objective of immersing disadvantaged children in the arts by taking them to major arts venues and enabling them to work with leading arts practitioners. Meanwhile, outside such schemes many schools develop their own productive partnerships with artists and performers on a local basis.

Internationally, the chance move of a major German orchestra’s headquarters and rehearsal space into a Bremen inner-city secondary school created first unease, then a dawning sense of opportunity and finally an extraordinary fusion of students and musicians, with daily interactions between the two groups, students mingling with orchestra members at lunch and sitting with them rehearsals, and a wealth of structured musical projects.

But perhaps the most celebrated example of this movement is Venezuela’s El Sistema, which since 1975 has promoted ‘intensive ensemble participation from the earliest stages, group learning, peer teaching and a commitment to keeping the joy of musical learning and music making ever-present’ through participation in orchestral ensembles, choral singing, folk music and jazz. El Sistema’s best-known ambassador in the UK – via its spectacular performances at the BBC Proms – is the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, and it is El Sistema that provides the model for In Harmony, as it does, obviously, for Sistema Scotland with its ‘Big Noise’ centres in Raploch (Stirling), Govanhill (Glasgow) and Torry (Aberdeen).

By and large, the claims made for such initiatives are as likely to be social and personal as musical, though Geoffrey Baker has warned against overstating their achievements and even turning them into a cult. Thus Sistema Scotland’s Big Noise is described as ‘an orchestra programme that aims to use music making to foster confidence, teamwork, pride and aspiration in the children taking part’. There are similar outcomes from Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen’s move into the Tenever housing estate, with dramatic improvements reported in pupil behaviour and the school’s reputation transformed from one to be avoided to one to which parents from affluent parts of the city now queue to send their children.

Similarly, the initial NFER evaluation report on In Harmony cites ‘positive effects on children’s self-esteem, resilience, enjoyment of school, attitudes towards learning, concentration and perseverance’ with, as a bonus, ‘some perceived impact on parents and families including raised aspirations for their children, increased enjoyment of music and confidence in visiting cultural venues, and increased engagement with school.’ Children and the Arts sees early engagement with the arts through its Quest and Start programmes as a way of ‘raising aspirations, increasing confidence, improving communication skills andunlocking creativity.’ Such engagement is offered not only in ‘high-need areas where there is often socio-economic disadvantage or low arts access’ but also, through the Start Hospices programme, to children with life-limiting and life-threatening illnesses and conditions.

The SAT score gains from Opera North’s In Harmony projects in Leeds and Hull add a further justificatory strand; one, indeed, that might just make policymakers in their 3Rs bunker sit up and take notice. For while viewing the arts as a kind of enhanced PSHE – a travesty, of course – may be just enough to keep these subjects in the curriculum, demonstrating that they impact on test scores in literacy and numeracy may make their place rather more secure.

This, you will say, is unworthily cynical and reductive. But cynicism in the face of policymakers’ crude educational instrumentality is, I believe, justified by the curriculum utterances and decisions of successive ministers over the past three decades, while the reductiveness is theirs, not mine. Thus Nicky Morgan excludes the arts from the EBacc, but in her response to the furore this provokes she reveals the limit of her understanding by confining her justification for the arts to developing pupils’ sense of ‘Britishness’, lamely adding that she ‘would expect any good school to complement [the EBacc subjects] with a range of opportunities in the arts’. ‘A range of opportunities’ – no doubt extra-curricular and optional – is hardly the same as wholehearted commitment to convinced, committed and compulsory arts education taught with the same eye to high standards that governments reserve for the so-called core subjects. Underlining the poverty of her perspective, Morgan tells pupils that STEM subjects open career options while arts subjects close them.

What worries me no less than the policy stance – from which, after all, few recent Secretaries of State have deviated – is the extent to which, in our eagerness to convince these uncomprehending ministers that the arts and arts education are not just desirable but essential, we may deploy only those justifications we think they will understand, whether these are generically social, behavioural and attitudinal (confidence, self-esteem) or in the realm of transferable skills (creativity, literacy, numeracy), or from neuroscience research (attention span, phonological awareness, memory). The otherwise excellent 2011 US report on the arts in schools from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities falls into the same trap of focussing mainly on social and transferable skills, though it does at least synthesise a substantial body of research evidence on these matters which this country’s beleaguered advocates of arts education will find useful.

Let me not be misunderstood: the cognitive, personal and social gains achieved by El Sistema, Children and the Arts, In Harmony and similar ventures are as impressive as they are supremely important for children and society, especially in cultures and contexts where children suffer severe disadvantage. And if it can be shown that such experiences enhance these children’s mastery of literacy and numeracy, where in the words of CPRT’s Kate Pickett, they encounter a much steeper ‘social gradient’ than their more affluent peers, then this is doubly impressive.

But the danger of presenting the case for arts education solely in these terms, necessary in the current policy climate though it may seem to be, is that it reduces arts education to the status of servant to other subjects, a means to someone else’s end (‘Why study music?’ ‘To improve your maths’) rather than an end in itself; and it justifies the arts on the grounds of narrowly-defined utility rather than intrinsic value. It also blurs the vital differences that exist between the various arts in their form, language, practice, mode of expression and impact. The visual arts, music, drama, dance and literature have elements in common but they are also in obvious and fundamental ways utterly distinct from each other. They engage different senses, require different skills and evoke different responses – synaptic as well as intellectual and emotional. All are essential. All should be celebrated.

This loss of distinctiveness is perhaps unwittingly implied by the evaluation of the only Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) project in this area. EEF evaluates ‘what works’ interventions designed to enhance the literacy and numeracy attainment of disadvantaged pupils (including CPRT’s own dialogic teaching project) and its ‘Act, Sing, Play’ project has tested the relative impact of music and drama on the literacy and numeracy attainment of Year 2 pupils. It found no significant difference between the two subjects. So, in the matter of using the arts as a way to raise standards in the 3Rs, do we infer that any art will do?

So, yes, the power of the arts, directly experienced and expertly taught, is such that they advance children’s development, understanding and skill beyond as well as within the realms of the auditory, visual, verbal, kinaesthetic and physical. And yes, it should be clearly understood that while the arts can cultivate affective and social sensibilities, when properly taught they are in no way ‘soft’ or intellectually undemanding, and to set them in opposition to so-called ‘hard’ STEM subjects, as Nicola Morgan did, is as crass as claiming that creativity has no place in science or engineering. But until schools have the inclination and confidence to champion art for art’s sake, and to make the case for each art in its own terms, and to cite a wider spectrum of evidence than social development alone, then arts education will continue to be relegated to curriculum’s periphery.

For this is a historic struggle against a mindset that is deeply embedded and whose policy manifestations include a national curriculum that ignores all that we have to come know about the developmental and educative power of the arts, and indeed about its economic as well as cultural value, and perpetuates the same ‘basics with trimmings’ curriculum formula that has persisted since the 1870s and earlier.

That’s why the Cambridge Primary Review argued that the excessively sharp differentiation of ‘core’ and ‘foundation’ subjects should cease and all curriculum domains should be approached with equal seriousness and be taught with equal conviction and expertise, even though, of course, some will be allocated more teaching time than others. This alternative approach breaks with the definition of ‘core’ as a handful of ring-fenced subjects and allows us instead to identify core learnings across a broader curriculum, thereby greatly enriching children’s educational experience, maximising the prospects for transfer of learning from one subject to another, and raising standards.

Seriousness, conviction, expertise: here we confront the challenge of teaching quality. Schemes like Sistema, In Harmony and those sponsored by Children and the Arts succeed because children encounter trained and talented musicians, artists, actors and dancers at the top of their game. These people provide inspirational role models and there is no limit to what children can learn from them. In contrast, music inexpertly taught – and at the fag-end of the day or week, to boot – not only turns children off but also confirms the common perception that music in schools is undemanding, joyless and irrelevant. Yet that, alas, is what too many children experience. For notwithstanding the previous government’s investment in ‘music hubs’, Ofsted remains pessimistic as to both the quality of music teaching and – no less serious – the ability of some school leaders to judge it and take appropriate remedial action, finding them too ready to entertain low expectations of children’s musical capacities.

But then this is another historic nettle that successive governments have failed to grasp. In its final report the Cambridge Primary Review recommended (page 506) a DfE-led enquiry into the primary sector’s capacity and resources to teach all subjects, not just ‘the basics’, to the highest standard, on the grounds that our children are entitled to nothing less and because of what inspection evidence consistently shows about the unevenness of schools’ curriculum expertise. DfE accepted CPR’s recommendation and during 2010-12 undertook its curriculum capacity enquiry, in the process confirming CPR’s evidence, arguments and possible solutions. However, for reasons only DfE can explain, the resulting report was never made public (though as the enquiry’s adviser I have seen it).

In every sense it’s time to face the music.

As well as being Chair of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust, Robin Alexander is a Trustee of the Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts.

www.robinalexander.org.uk

March 9, 2015 by Teresa Cremin

Educating for creativity

On 5 March I attended the first of the Anna Craft memorial lectures which will be given annually in commemoration of the life and work of this influential educator and Co-Director of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust.

It was a bittersweet occasion, shared with Anna’s colleagues from multiple arts and cultural organisations, universities and schools and her family and friends. The 150 seats went within the first fortnight and a waiting list grew rapidly, testifying to the esteem in which Anna’s work is held; it remains an important force in the shaping of theory and practice in creativity and education.

Anna would have been honoured by the words of Sir Ken Robinson, who gave the first lecture, entitled ‘Educating for Creativity: From what is to what might be’; he described her contribution as ‘immense’. Filmed in Los Angeles, the lecture was shown simultaneously at the Open University’s centre in Camden (where I was) and at Exeter University (she was working in both universities at the time of her death at just 52 years old). The intention of the annual lecture series is to help sustain her legacy and to disseminate the best contemporary thinking about creativity and education, both in the UK and internationally.

Ken Robinson began by masterfully dismissing some of the myths of creativity: that it is ‘rare’, an attribute of ‘special’ people or that you are either creative or you are not, an absurd idea, since as Ken observed; ‘if you’re human it comes with the kit’. He also asserted that confusion remains over the concept itself. In his view, this is one of the key reasons that creativity in education is still not taken seriously by policy makers.

This was a timely reminder that as educators and researchers if we cannot agree our terms, we will not be able to teach for creativity nor document the impact of children’s creative learning. As Csikszentmihalyi notes, the education profession lacks a commonly accepted theoretically underpinned framework for creativity that can be developed in practice. Without common understanding new myths will develop, like the one currently circulating about the so called ‘creative curriculum’. I keep hearing this described by teachers as if were an entity, a planned and prescribed monolithic given – delivered in the afternoons – as a form of respite from the morning rituals of literacy and numeracy. Last Saturday, at the London Festival of Education, (run by UCL, Institute of Education), one session was devoted to achieving literacy and numeracy targets creatively through using technology aligned to cross curricula themes. This ‘creative curriculum’ focused on individual set learning tasks and offered sets of planned deliverables.

Where, I ask myself, are the children in all this? Where are their voices, their views and their funds of knowledge? How do these shape the curriculum as planned and lived? In the recent CPRT review Children, their voices and their experiences of school: What does the evidence tell us? Carol Robinson highlights that in order to empower children to act as partners in their own learning, they need to be partners in decisions about teaching and learning. A curriculum which is forged creatively through dialogue, collaboration and interaction must surely involve children since, as Anna and Bob Jeffrey argue, creative practice is learner-inclusive and enables children to have some agency and control over their school learning life.

One school which seeks to involve children in co-designing the curriculum and fosters creative learning is St Leonards C of E in Devon, a CPRT Schools Alliance institution which is imaginatively led by Jo Evans. Teachers in Jo’s school, as in many others, even in accountability cultures such as ours, can and do choose to exercise their professional agency.

Many teachers, encouraged by working with partners from creative and cultural organisations, and determined to offer co-constructed creative curricula, proactively seek out ways to shape their school curricula responsively, drawing on the CPR’s conception of a broad and balanced curriculum. These professionals show considerable commitment and imagination, despite, or perhaps because of, the persistent performativity agenda.

For another example, see head teacher Iain Erskine’s account of the work at Fulbridge Academy in Peterborough, also a CPRT Schools Alliance member. Already a National School of Creativity, Fulbridge have adopted CPR’s eight curriculum domains (including that of arts and creativity) from nursery to Year 6; they teach, assess and plan with reference to these. The five staff who recently presented at a CPRT London regional network meeting, on Fulbridge’s approach to assessment without levels, certainly demonstrated that they take risks, have the power to innovate and problem solve – together.

Though it has to be acknowledged that these schools may be exceptions to the rule, since in recent years the relentless quest for higher standards has tended to obscure the personal and agentic dimensions of teaching and learning, and may have fostered a mindset characterised more by compliance and conformity than curiosity and creativity.

For primary educators tensions abound, not only because the policy of performativity appears contradictory to the apparent freedoms and professional agency offered in political rhetoric, but also because teachers’ own confidence as creative educators has been radically reduced by prescribed curricula and the endless barrage of change and challenge. This has had consequences. The recently published Warwick Commission report, Enriching Britain: Culture, Creativity and Growth, identifies a worrying reduction in emphasis on, and capacity for, creative opportunities in schools, and asserts that the impoverishment of creative experience in the early years is linked to lack of engagement in adult life. More worryingly still it identifies a link between economic disadvantage and low levels of creative engagement. Primarily this is an issue of equity, which demands, as Ken Robinson did also, that we respond. To borrow Anna’s term, we need to ‘possibility think’ our way forwards here in order to move from ‘what is’ to ‘what might be’.

One route onwards is to surely revisit our purpose, and re-consider the aims and values underpinning the curriculum. The final Cambridge Primary Review report innovatively proposed ‘exciting the imagination’ as one of the 12 core aims for primary education:

Exciting the imagination. To excite children’s imagination in order that they can advance beyond present understanding, extend the boundaries of their lives, contemplate worlds possible as well as actual, understand cause and consequence, develop the capacity for empathy, and reflect on and regulate their behaviour; to explore and test language, ideas and arguments in every activity and form of thought … We assert the need to emphasise the intrinsic value of exciting children’s imagination. To experience the delights – and pains – of imagining, and of entering into the imaginative worlds of others, is to become a more rounded and capable person.

In planning to achieve this, through collaborating with children and other adults, (e.g. TAs, parents, and partners from the creative and cultural organisations), teachers will be demonstrating, as Anna Craft did, a deep commitment to fostering creativity in the young, and, if supported, they may also be involved, as Anna was, in researching the consequences of such playful practice on children’s creative learning. As educators, if we afford higher value to ‘what if’ and ‘as if’ thinking, work harder to include children in shaping the curriculum and recognise their own and their teachers need for agency, we will not only be taking Anna Craft’s legacy forward, we will also be cultivating creativity – that potent ‘engine of human growth’.

August 18, 2014 by Robin Alexander

Anna Craft

Professor Anna Craft, who died on 11 August at the cruelly early age of 52, was a key figure in the development of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust, a widely respected educational researcher and writer, an outstanding colleague and a true friend.

Within CPRT, Anna concentrated particularly on research, and the Trust’s South West Research Schools Network based at Exeter and Bath Spa universities was very much her creation, as was the forthcoming research-based CPD programme on children’s voice on which the Trust is working with Pearson. The common strand was her commitment to making a difference to children’s lives. Heeding children’s voices and helping teachers to enhance their own understanding and skill were central to that quest.

Outside CPRT, Anna simultaneously held senior positions at Exeter University and the Open University, and her research on creativity in education, educational futures and ‘possibility thinking’ is highly regarded in both the UK and other countries. This work is driven by Anna’s concern that today’s complex and fast-changing world requires creative capacities whose development from the early years onwards we neglect at our and our children’s peril.

Anna saw creativity as an everyday and lifelong imperative, a problem-finding, problem-solving capability with possibility thinking – the transformation from what is to what might be – at its heart. Creativity in this larger sense includes but also reaches well beyond the arts to encompass a wide array of cognitive and affective capacities that have yet to achieve the central place in children’s education they deserve. Symptomatically, creativity thus defined could well be another of those ‘parts the national curriculum doesn’t reach’. In any event, Anna would have taken issue with the BBC interviewee who claimed that by including art and design, design technology and music, England’s new national curriculum does all that needs to be done for children’s creative development. Anna therefore bequeathes a challenge as well as a vision.

The best academic work in education displays not just impeccable scholarship but also a passion for the life-enhancing possibilities of education itself and a desire to persuade others that this is a cause for which we have no option but to fight. That combination of rigour, intensity and integrity of purpose and eagerness to communicate and persuade marked all Anna’s work and reflected the kind of person she was.

But the other Anna, noted by friends, students and colleagues alike, was warm, lively, engaging, affectionate, funny – in short the best of company and a wonderful person. We shall miss her.

Anna Craft’s funeral is at 2pm on Friday 22nd August near Totnes, Devon. Full details here.
Do please add your thoughts and memories below.