Overview - Presentation to UTLC
Introduction
This project resides in the Research into Practice strand of TQEF, because it was built upon a foundation of research and practice in Enhancing Access to Personal Creativity that the team had been carrying out for several years. That foundational work was with artists, mainly writers and performers, and was delivered through workshops and summer schools between 2002 and 2005. Project 3b offered an opportunity to test the transferability of the skills and principles from that work with a wider participant group. We wanted to maximise the benefits to the University of having Drama staff with these skills, and to extend the University’s collective understanding of, and access to, creative modes of working.
Creativity is an emergent, highly transferable, quality that strongly relates to personal effectiveness. All of the work on the project has been about enabling participants to do their work more effectively, and with greater degrees of innovation (where appropriate), energy and enjoyment.
The Project
The project consisted of the development and delivery of:
and the facilitation of:
Target group: everyone!
We worked with staff from almost all academic schools, as well as administrative and student services staff. The flexibility and transferability of our approach meant that staff could apply the approaches to all aspects of any kind of work. The project was not limited to people working within artistic practices.
We also worked with students from across the School of Music, Humanities and Media, from the School of Education, and – our favourite ‘challenge’ - from Accountancy! Students in all of these subjects were able to apply the methods to all aspects of their studies. They reported things like:
“My creativity in my personal, educational and work-related lifestyle has increased dramatically since the beginning of this course.”
“I have learned things about myself and my work and in the future will draw on these teachings to enhance my creativity in my chosen career.”
We also collaborated with Education’s creativity project (TQEF 2a) to design the Creativity cafes, and we presented at their café for national delegates.
Pedagogy
(for full Pedagogical Statement, please follow the link on the left)
The core feature of our work, perhaps its unique characteristic, is the pedagogical approach that we have developed. Unlike other projects, such as that in Education, this project does not define Creativity by outcome, but by process. Rather than teaching people techniques that they can use, our approach facilitates changes in the participant, helping them to become a more personally creative individual.
To this end, our work makes use of three main tools. First and foremost is a principle-based curriculum for creativity that was developed from our own work as successful practitioners and academics, and from the good practice that we observed in colleagues. Once we had identified these key principles a number of powerful ideas emerged:
After we had identified these principles we mapped them against current research into the psychology of creativity, and found a significant intersection of ideas allowing us to develop a principle-based curriculum for the teaching of creativity that can be applied in a flexible and personalised manner.
Secondly, we have developed a pedagogy for implementing this curriculum. This teaching approach is based on several factors; first of all, that the participant’s cognitive patterns and habits of thought and learning often dictate the boundaries within which that learning can take place; secondly, that these thoughts and patterns can be changed by the employment of particular elements of the curriculum (one participant reported “[now] I am able to stand back and get perspective. I am able to detach myself from rigid patterns of thinking”); thirdly and most importantly, the application of these processes in this teaching approach are for the purpose of helping to bring about fundamental change in the individual rather than impose new techniques on old patterns.
The third tool is the concept of development through modelling and interactivity. Because the facilitators adhere to the principles of the curriculum in everything we do, even relatively passive participants can share in a new and innovative approach to relating to tasks. The mere presence of an alternative path, modelled by us, is often enough to invite them to walk that path themselves. When more direct and formal teaching is desired/required it is almost always presented in an interactive format. The combination of these principles being exhibited and lived through the classroom experience has proven to be both powerful and explosive in terms of bringing the participants’ creativity to a higher standard. Participants said:
“How nice it is to be allowed to draw your own conclusions and to fit the knowledge and understanding into your own existing framework….it’s really powerful.”
“Made me revisit where my fire is in my work – really set me on a journey of thinking.”
“Having some fire in your belly is important and it means that you can do a really excellent job.”
Outcomes
The Future